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watusichris · 3 years

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My Brilliant Career in Chicago Pro Wrestling: A True Story

Damn, I could have sworn I’d posted this 2015 Night Flight story, which remains the funniest thing I’ve ever written. Every word is true. ********** In the early 1970s, before Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation (today World Wrestling Entertainment) turned professional wrestling into a pay-per-view cash cow, pro grappling was a wide-open game run by maverick regional promoters and catering to lunatic fans. I got to experience this incredible world intimately: For two years, I served as “publicist” for the promoter in one of the biggest wrasslin’ towns in the country, Chicago.

I was fresh out of college back in 1972, and returned to my old room in my mother’s apartment in Evanston bearing a seemingly worthless bachelor’s degree in English and no immediate prospects for gainful employment. Fortunately, my father believed in nepotism.

After a long career as a TV executive that had garnered him two Peabody Awards, my dad was then the general manager of WSNS, a Chicago UHF station that broadcast on Channel 44. It was a low-rent operation that my old man helped legitimize by securing telecasts of White Sox games. (He loathed Sox announcer Harry Caray, who would get hammered out of his skull while working in the booth, and rightly thought major league screwball-turned-color man Jimmy Piersall was out of his mind.)

Though such questionable WSNS programming as a daily late-night weathercast delivered by a buxom negligee-clad blonde stretched out on a heart-shaped bed was a thing of the past, colorful holdovers from the old schedule remained. And thus my dad called me one day to say he could get me some part-time work doing PR for Bob Luce, the local pro wrestling promoter, who mounted the weekly show All Star Championship Wrestling on the station.

Naturally, I was hired on the spot at my first meeting with Luce, who was something of a legend in Chicago sports circles at the time. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bob Greene captured had him perfectly in a famous column in which every sentence ended with an exclamation point.

Stocky, florid of complexion, and as loud as his off-the-rack sport coats, the outsized Luce was the dictionary definition of the word “character.” You’d sit down with him in a restaurant, and the other diners would duck and cover. Constantly agitated and gesticulating wildly, his stentorian conversation was a manic torrent of hype and madness, punctuated by explosive laughter than sounded like a machine gun going off next to your ear.

Fittingly, before joining the wrestling biz, Luce had edited a tabloid, the National Tattler. Like the National Enquirer of that frontier era, the rag made its bones with totally fictitious “news” stories featuring lots of cleavage and outré bloodletting. At one lunch, to the very evident embarrassment of the neighboring clientele, Luce regaled me with the tale of one inspired Tattler cover story, which I will recount Greene-style. Imagine it at full volume: “I got this idea, see, for a story about a sex orgy! [He pronounced “orgy” with a hard “g,” as in “Porgy” of Porgy and Bess.] But it had to be a different kind of orgy! So I got my wife Sharon to take her clothes off and covered her with peanut butter! And we took some pictures, and the lights were HOT, and the peanut butter melted all over her! They were great pictures! We called it – ha ha HA! – ‘PEANUT BUTTER ORGY!’”

Luce had graduated to promoting pro wrestling events in Chicago and other Midwestern markets, in partnership with the American Wrestling Association’s star attractions, Verne Gagne and Dick the Bruiser, of whom more in a moment. (His sweet, funny, but definitely tough wife knew the business: She had wrestled under the name Sharon Lass.)

As the noisy host of All Star Championship Wrestling, Luce would interview the stars of his upcoming promotions, show footage of recent contests, and pump the next matches. Thrusting a finger at the camera in one of his windups, he would shriek, “BE THERE!!!” Ever the sales impresario, he also served as the show’s principal pitchman, appearing in tandem with some of his hulking charges -- and occasionally with special guest hucksters like former heavyweight champ Leon Spinks -- to spiel for a long line of sketchy local advertisers. They are among the greatest and most hilarious commercials ever made.

As Luce’s publicity rep, commanding a monthly paycheck of $200, I was charged with lightweight duty: writing and mailing press releases promoting the bi-weekly Friday night matches at the Chicago International Amphitheatre, assisting the WSNS camera crew at the gigs (sometimes by protecting their extra film magazines from flying bodies at ringside), and calling in the results of the matches to the local papers. (The last task proved to be the most onerous. I’d ring up the local sports desks late on the nights of the matches and harangue some half-drunk, bored assistant editor whose interest in the “sport” could not have been more infinitesimal. When I finally managed to get the Sun-Times to print the results of one match, I felt as if I’d qualified for a Publicists Guild award.) I also performed certain functions for Luce when he was out of town or too busy to handle them. One weekday afternoon I accompanied Superstar Billy Graham, later a big WWF name and a sort of proto-Hulk Hogan, to Wrigley Field, where he was interviewed by nonplussed announcer Jack Brickhouse between innings of a Chicago Cubs radio broadcast.

Every other week for nearly two years, I’d take the El down to the Amphitheatre, located on Halsted Street on the far South Side, adjacent to the old Chicago Stock Yards. (I held onto the job even after I secured a similarly nepotistic but full-time position – writing about cheap component stereo systems for Zenith Radio Corporation.) The antique, immense Amphitheatre had hosted big political conventions, auto shows, circuses, rodeos, and concerts by Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin, but Luce’s dates at the venue, as you will see, attracted a distinctly different class of customer.

The pre-match staging area, where I’d meet Luce and the crew, was the Sirloin Room of the adjacent Stock Yard Inn, not far from the site of the old South Side cattle slaughterhouses. This is where Luce’s employees and pals would also convene before the night’s entertainment began to swill a couple of cocktails and shoot the breeze. It was a cast worthy of a Damon Runyon story.

Luce employed a bodyguard, a towering ex-Chicago cop named Duke, who had reputedly shot six men before being relieved of duty by the PD. He stood about six-four and dressed exactly like John Shaft. He emanated an aura of extreme menace. Once, when I asked him what he would do if someone actually started any serious trouble, Duke wordlessly pulled back the lapel of his full-length leather coat to reveal a shoulder holster bulging with a .44 Magnum.

The promotion’s bagman, charged with collecting the night’s cash receipts, was a diminutive cat everyone called Bill the Barber. I never knew his last name, but he did in fact run a South Side barbershop. He’d invariably show up dressed in a sport coat that looked like a TV test pattern and a skinny-brim fedora, with watery eyes that sometimes flicked nervously above his pencil-thin mustache. He kept a .38 strapped to his belt.

Many nights, a mysterious character referred to only as “Carmie La Papa” would put in an appearance. This elderly Italian gentleman was always treated with great deference and ate on Luce’s tab. I never found out exactly what he did. But he looked a lot like the mobster played by Pasquale Cajano in Martin Scorsese’s Casino, and I thought it wise not to inquire about his line of work.

There were also bona fide wrestling groupies, well-stacked, slightly haggard old-school broads who draped themselves on the bar, sipping pink ladies. One night, Luce leaned over to me in the Sirloin Room and said, in a whisper that could be heard 20 feet away, “After the matches, these girls and the guys go to a motel up in Prospect Heights, and they have orgies.” (Again, pronounced with a hard “g.”) The most popular of these was reportedly Gloria, a tall, pneumatic redhead of uncertain but rapidly advancing age; Luce confided, “She will do anything.”

The matches themselves were something to behold. I’d usually watch them in the company of WSNS’s young, jaded camera crew, from the dilapidated press box high above the ring in the center of the Amphitheatre. The crowd – thousands of poorly dressed, myopic, malodorous, and steeply inebriated men – was a product of what may be called the pre-ironic era of pro wrestling. There was no such thing as a suspension of disbelief among these spectators. Disbelief did not exist. Though the matches were as closely stage-managed as a production of Richard III, these rubes accepted every feigned punch and bogus drop kick as the McCoy.

Pro wrestling is the eternal contest between virtue and evil, and the wrestlers were identified in equal number as good guys and heels. Most of the good guys on the undercard – there were usually half a dozen matches, with one main event – were young “scientific” wrestlers whose Greco-Roman moves were no match for the brazenly illegal play of the dirty heels, who almost invariably won their bouts with tactics that would not pass muster with an elementary school playground monitor, let alone a legitimate referee. About the only one of these “babyfaces” (or, alternatively, “chumps”) who was vouchsafed an occasional victory was Greg Gagne, son of the promotion’s star attraction and part owner.

By the early ‘70s, Verne Gagne had been wrestling professionally for more than two decades; drafted by the Chicago Bears and then rebelling against team owner George Halas’ prohibition of a sideline on the mat, he had chosen the ring over the gridiron. He was 46 years old when I started working for Luce; he was still in decent shape, and, unlike almost all of his opponents, he still had all of his teeth.

I only managed to spend time with him once. For some reason now lost in the dense fog of time, Luce dispatched me to meet Gagne at the elegant Pump Room of the Drake Hotel near Lake Michigan. There, as cabaret star Dorothy Donegan serenaded us on the piano, the 16-time world heavyweight wrestling champion of the world got me brain-dead drunk, and then poured me into a cab home. He was an excellent guy.

Many of the other good guys on Luce’s undercards were reliable patsies for the baddies. Pepper Gomez, one of the domestic game’s few Mexican stars, was a venerable attraction who was allowed the rare triumph; billed as “the Man with the Cast-Iron Stomach,” he once allowed a Volkswagen Bug to be driven over his gut on Luce’s TV show, where he was a frequent guest.

One of my favorites was Yukon Moose Cholak. Then a veteran of 20 years on the mat, Moose owned a bar not far from the Amphitheatre, but he still worked regularly for his close pal Luce in the AWA. Huge, pot-bellied, and benign, he boasted a ripe Sout’ Side accent rivaled only by Dennis Farina’s. He was hardly an exceptional combatant: He moved around the ring with the fleetness of a dazed sloth. He was a regular on Luce’s show, and often appeared with the host in his TV spots.

The only time I appeared as a guest on All Star Championship Wrestling, Moose was the victim of the on-camera carnage that was a requisite feature of the show. At the time, conflict of interest be damned, I was writing a column about wrestling for a short-lived local sports paper called Fans, and was brought in to lend something like legitimacy to the proceedings. Luce offered me a chair on his threadbare set to push a forthcoming match between Cholak, who appeared on camera next to me, and Handsome Jimmy Valiant, a new heel on the rise in the market.

I figured something ugly was going to happen, but I went about extolling the virtues of Moose’s nearly non-existent mat skills in the front of the camera. Suddenly, Valiant crept up from behind the black scrim behind us and whacked Cholak over the head with a metal folding chair. To this day, I believe my expression of outraged surprise was worthy of a local Emmy, but a nomination eluded me.

I was actually very fond of Valiant, whom I interviewed with his “brother” and tag team partner Luscious John Valiant for Fans. Jimmy was a peroxided, strutting egomaniac in the grand Gorgeous George manner, and he had some classic patter: “I’m da wimmen’s pet and da men’s regret! I got da body wimmen love and men fear! And you, you’re as useful as a screen door in a submarine, daddy!” A rock ‘n’ roll fan, he went on to a very successful solo career, appropriately enough in Memphis, the capital of all things Elvis.

After Gagne the elder, the AWA’s biggest attraction was the tag team of Dick the Bruiser and the Crusher. Bruiser had gotten his competitive start as a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, but had been a top wrestling draw since 1955. Somewhere along the way, he had been converted from heel to hero, and the Chicago fans adored him. Among the merch sold at the Amphitheatre were Dick the Bruiser Fan Club buttons; measuring six inches in diameter, they could either be pinned on one’s chest or, with the aid of a built-in cardboard stand, be displayed as a plaque. I kept mine on my desk at my straight job to freak out my co-workers.

Early in my gig with Luce, I was taken to meet Bruiser in the locker room. He sat on a table smoking a huge cigar. When I was introduced to him, he exclaimed, “Hey, you’re Ed Morris’ kid? You got more hair than your old man!” My father, who was in fact almost completely bald, had been known to associate with winners of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes. I was a little surprised that he ran in Bruiser’s circle.

The Crusher’s career in the squared circle dated back to the late ‘40s. I was even more impressed by him than I was by the Bruiser, for he had been the inspiration of the Novas’ wrasslin’-themed single “The Crusher,” a huge 1965 radio hit in Chicago for the Minnesota garage band the Novas (and later eloquently covered by the Cramps). Bruiser and Crusher were a unique combo: They were “good guys,” but they earned their keep by being badder than the “bad guys” they gutter-stomped.

The villains in that era of pro wrestling were often the object of atavistic xenophobia and hatred. Long before the U.S.’s conflicts in the Middle East, the Sheik (né Ed Farhat in Lansing, Michigan), who took the ring wearing a burnoose, was among the most reviled of heels. Some of the older fans were World War II vets, and they lustily booed Baron von Raschke, who climbed through the ropes with a monocle in one eye, draped in a Nazi flag. He was actually a U.S. Army vet born Jim Raschke in Omaha, Nebraska. His fake German accent was utterly feeble.

The AWA’s all-purpose villain, who would go on to bigger things as one of McMahon’s first WWF stars, was “Pretty Boy” Bobby Heenan, dubbed “the Weasel” by the Bruiser. Heenan was featured in his own matches, but he was most reliably entertaining as a manager, of the most duplicitous and cowardly variety, in another villain’s corner. You didn’t need a script to know what was going to happen: Just as it looked like the good guy was going to triumph, Heenan would leap into the ring and smash the apparent victor’s head into a turnbuckle or hit him over the skull with a water bucket.

Heenan featured in the most outrageous story I heard during my brilliant career in wrestling. One night I was sitting with the film crew when Al Lerner, the mustachioed, shaggy-haired, bespectacled WSNS sports reporter, entered the press box with a portable tape machine on his shoulder and a stunned look on his face. “I’ve interviewed people in front of burning buildings,” Al said. “I’ve interviewed people as they were jumping out of airplanes. But I’ve never interviewed anyone while they were getting a blowjob.”

It seems that while Al was in the locker room recording some audio bites from Heenan, a voluptuous girl standing nearby walked over to the wrestler, kneeled down in front of him, pulled down his trunks, and began giving him the kind of pre-match service Mickey Rourke probably dreamed of but never received. As she went about her business, Heenan continued to spout invective to Al as if nothing extraordinary was transpiring. With that moment alone, Bobby Heenan earned his place in the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.

I visited Heenan in the locker room on a somewhat less eventful evening, but that night I learned the secret of many pros’ mat success. As I was talking to him, I noticed that his forehead was crosshatched with tiny scars, some of them new and still livid. I later mentioned this to one of the crew, and was told that these wounds – referred to as “juicing” -- were actually self-inflicted, so that the wrestlers could easily draw blood during critical moments of violence in their matches.

As Heenan said in a later interview, “If you want the green, you gotta bring the red.” Gore was a staple of pro wrestling, and there was nothing like sitting in an arena filled with 10,000 or 15,000 crazed spectators and hearing a drunken chant go up as a good guy pummeled a heel to the mat: “WE WANT BLOOD! WE WANT BLOOD! WE WANT BLOOD!”

My last hurrah in pro wrestling was one of Luce’s rare alfresco promotions, a multi-bout 1974 card at old Comiskey Park, the White Sox’s stadium, which climaxed with a 16-man battle royal. I don’t remember who triumphed in the main event, but I do remember that someone on the crew brought a bat and some softballs along, and we ended the evening shagging fly balls under the lights where Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio once played.

The outlaw era of regional pro wrestling is a dim memory for most. The racket would get wilder after I left it: In an interview with Nashville wrestling figure Jimmy Cornette, Heenan said that a fan at a 1975 Amphitheatre match pulled out a pistol and began firing at him, but the shooter only managed to wound four people in the rows in front of him.

McMahon’s WWF brought the regional promoters’ day to a close, pillaging most of the big names in the game in the process. Today, the WWE has been displaced in popularity by the even gaudier UFC contests. Most of the stars I met – including Bruiser, Crusher, and Cholak – are dead now. Heenan, a throat cancer survivor, has been in poor health for more than a decade. Verne Gagne died this April; in 2009, suffering from dementia, he accidentally killed a 97-year-old fellow resident in a Minnesota assisted living facility. Even the old stomping grounds are gone: The Chicago Amphitheatre was razed in 1999.

Bob Luce passed away in 2007, but his wild-ass legacy may live on via an unlikely champion. There are many analogs between pro wrestling and rock ‘n’ roll, and this April, mat mega-fan Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins announced on Twitter that he had bought Luce’s memorabilia and an archive of 9,000 vintage wrestling photos. Maybe he and former Hüsker Dü front man Bob Mould, a fellow wrasslin’ aficionado who once worked for McMahon as a writer, can make something of it. That would rock.

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thebrightsessions · 4 years

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Entertainment Spotlight: Felix Trench

Felix is an actor based in London. In audio drama, he plays Rudyard Funn in Wooden Overcoats, Phil Cheeseman in Zombies, Run! and the narrator in Quid Pro Euro, the last of which he also writes. TV includes work for the BBC and Channel 4, and he has performed in theatres around London. He is part of the improv team The Present Company, one of the house teams for The Free Association. He lives on a boat on the Thames from where he runs online pub quizzes every Tuesday. Felix grew up in a British family in Brussels.

You’ve worked on multiple Podcasts in the past. What drew you to the medium?

I grew up listening to radio sitcoms and other radio comedy; it's a common thing in many British homes, broadcast around the time people are making supper. There's also new radio drama and soaps interspersed throughout the day so I was very familiar with what modern audio drama sounds like.

In a country of 65 million with one dominant state broadcaster, there's fewer opportunities to work in radio drama than there are people who want to and I didn't fancy getting caught in a cycle of pitching. I was lucky enough to know good people in complementary fields who wanted to work with me, so we did that for about a year then put out a podcast with what we'd come up with and sat back to see if anybody listened.

That's what got me in. But it's the community of creators that kept me here. Over time, I got to make friends and act with people making brilliant work all around the world in a way that I really wasn't expecting. Although there is a lot more to listen to than there was five years ago, we're still only at the beginning of finding out where this is going and I'm looking forward to what's coming up.

You run pub quizzes: do you have a favorite quiz question or topic?

That's right! I've run them as a side hustle in pubs and online for most of the last decade. In pubs, I love anything that's a measurement because it produces a physical reaction. For example, if you ask How high is a tennis net?, half the pub will hold their hands out in order to mime tennis nets at the other half.

You have to ask questions that people have a chance of getting or it's not fun for them, and when I ask them online I have to bear in mind that I have an international audience so I can't rely on British culture. It's amazing how much so-called general knowledge is country specific; every country teaches very different History syllabuses for instance, and while I try not to be too Euro-centric, I generally, err, fail. Geography questions are my saving grace. Everyone's seen a map, even if it's skewed to make your home look like the centre of the universe, so asking how many countries border the sea of Japan, for instance, is fair game wherever you're from.

(It's four).

If you could have a conversation with Percy Higgenson-Wyte, what would you ask?

Is there some sort of yearly Order conference where you all meet up in one country? Is it fun?

I feel there's a lot of admin that must go on that's been layered in decades of tradition but also in attempts to find common goals between the different nations. It really should be a branch of the UN.

Describe each of the following in one word: Who you are, what you value the most, and what you’d be if you were a food item.

1. Lucky

2. Variety

3. Butter

Can you share your favorite piece of fan art?

I love this artwork done by @acidtygr in 2016. Lauren was visiting London and helped my team and I at the Wooden Overcoats podcast out at a charity event. The picture shows one of our characters, Antigone Funn, meeting Dr Bright.

Thanks so much for taking the time, Felix! Give Order & Chaos, Chapter Four: Tabula Rasa a relisten right here.

Photo: Matthew Thomas

#entertainment spotlight #the bright sessions #order and chaos spotlight #felix trench

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gallyl · 3 years

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Tag game

tag 9 people you would like to know better or catch up with! I was tagged by @subdee thank you!

last song: I’m currently wondering through the magical universe of Spotify (which was recently introduced in my country), so nothing in particular, but my current on-repeat is Cults - Always forever because of this HxH edit. I’m stuck in this fandom :) In this regard, I’m also checking HxH fanosts and a German band Poems for Jamiro, some songs remind me of HxH, for example Heartbeat (Kurapika) and Never get home (Killugon).

last movie: Nothing fresh. I saw the Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire while in bed processing side-effects of vaccination. Goblet of Fire is underrated. Before this I watched Mata Hari (1931 film), it broke my heart. The real biography of Mata Hari dancer was even more tragic, and the main couple was played by Greta Garbo and Ramon Novarro - both closeted lgbtq+. Black and white films are great: Hollywood and European cinema were different but they both broadcast a hypnotic intellectuality and a soothing therapeutic effect.

currently watching: I recently wached Marvelous Mrs Maisel and it’s brilliant. The third season was the most powerful IMAO. As for the anime, it’s Yu Yu Hakusho (episode 23 out of 118?). It’s kinda outdated, the early episodes are boring due to many battles, but I remember that Togashi was under pressure from the editors despite the fact that his storytelling was obviously better than battle scenes. So I’ll continue to watch in the strong hope of better arcs. I admire Togashi’s brilliant consistency in his ideas and ideals, they stay the same but you can see how they develop in his future works. Similarly, HxH characters keep psychological features and cores from old characters. HxH is a giant leap forward. Togashi is always learning, improving and staying faithful to himself.

currently reading: Ingmar Bergman’s memoirs “Laterna Magica” (“the Magic Lantern”). Bergman was a Swedish film director, one of the best in the 20th century. His life was f***d up from the beginning due to toxic family upbringing. All siblings had to follow radical religious dogmas and wrong psychological advice from child doctors. And so this boy grew up into a pinned voodoo doll and went on destroying other people’s lives, incapable of love, unable to heal. He recovered eventually but his films got more experimental, absorbing his darkness and creative genius like a sponge. Surprisingly, his films were always kind, filled with so much compassion. And he filmed women like men - his female leads had deep characterisation, long close-ups of faces, open sexuality. I think this book is hard to understand if you are not an artist yourself, and it’s difficult to read if you are mentally sensitive. But it’s good for those, who had a difficult childhood and are striving to become successful in their career.

currently craving: SEMLA. It is served in Scandinavia from end-Jan to mid-Feb! We don’t have it on sale, but if these delightful deadly cream bombs show up in any bakery or cafe in another city - I’ll go there. Cheaper than to fly to Sweden, which is on lockdown anyway, duh.

Tagging @buzzykrueger @emperorthighs, @little-lonely-flower, @telehxhtrash! Only if you want to!

#tag game #thanks for tagging me ~_~#ingmar bergman

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borisbubbles · 4 years

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17. CZECH REPUBLIC

Benny Christo - “Kemama”

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So first off, thank you for the nice commens. 😇The past few months haven’t been the happiest time for me, so thank you for your patience as I scraped my bearings together for another post! 😁

So I will now extend that same sympathy to Benny Christo, whom I think I damn fucking underrated. Let’s jump in~

ENTRY ANALYSIS

As one may expect i INSTANTLY liked “Kemama” because you know, it’s a fun, laid-back, tropical afro-breeze, completely different from anything else we would see in NFs and the year. EXACTLY the type of song I was hoping the Czech NF would deliver (and deliver they did, see NF Corner). This level of mild like swung into strong unironic like upon realizing that the title is a contraction of “Okay Mother” 😍 and the song deals with the subject of overcoming racially-tinged discrimination and rising above the hate. That just feels very poetic and apt? “Kemama” felt like the entry that had to overcome the highest odds in order to earn the respect it so fully deserves, and still hasn’t fully reached it.

.In our Western European bubble, comprised mostly of gays and left-liberal straights, we have a very grateful and universal acceptance of many different kinds of [lizard] people that make up Eurovision casts. Yet with “Kemama” we may have reached an unusually grimy undercurrent of coded racism.

Of course nothing I read was outrageously rancid, than Cod for that. The worst statement I read was a double-whammy of “EWW THIS ISN’T CARIBBEANVISION” and “WHY WOULD SOMEONE FROM *KENYA* WANT TO REP CZECHIA IN EUROVISION?”, and yes they first got the continent wrong and then *also* got the country wrong in the follow-up post and then they were torn limb from limb by a pack of aformentioned left-liberals. I’m sorry but i can’t not have any other response than laughter in the face of yet another fucking MORON faceplanting themselves with words like a... racist JK Rowling if you will?

Still, while I never read something outright vile about Benny doesn’t mean I found his deniers really annoying and they were! Think “Ew Solovey is ‘Too Aggressive’ it will NEVER DO WELL IN ESC”, a statement that isn’t coded nor racist (and yet extremely false and misguided), functioned as a similar idea by the same minds. A statement borne from the same breed of narrow-minded stubbornness which has caused elitist morons to be all “there is **SOMETHING** about “Kemama” i do *NOT* like and I cannot lay my finger on it... but I **DO NOT** like it at ALL. It won’t ever qualify because everyone will think the same way I do” -- Eurovision snobs, tiptoeing around racial coda in January 2020.

They would also insist that Benny was “arrogant” because he was seemingly impervious to their (de)constructive criticism. Like, if you were a biracial butterfly living in a slavic country who had to deal with statements such as the above on a regular basis, you WOULD block out the noise. And if you heard them often enough you will start to block them out pre-emptively. DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW COPING MECHANISMS WORK?? (oh wait you’re white-privileged. Nevermind 🙄)

So naturally, when Benny decided that he would revamp “Okay Mother” by adding in MORE African elements it only made me love him even more lol. 😍 Was it a bull-headed, contrarian and possibly really stupid decision? Yes, yes and absolutely yes. Was it worth it? Well he managed to incite even more meltdowns in a group of people I feel nothing but contempt for, so hell yeah? Eurovision was cancelled anyway so who cares how much ‘worse’ “Kemama” actually got.

Okay, so we’ve arrived at the revamp.

Granted, it wasn’t the best ‘vamp, I’d be a fool to deny it. The new elements threw a wrench in the melodic balance of the song. Out went tropical laid-back fun, IN went that fucking guitar oh my god this is some Hotel FM piano levels of overbearing I swear. (nb: this still didn’t stop me from ironically stanning Hotel FM’s lame asses anyway 😍). However, it made the personal backstory that I loved and savoured take a backseat to the now inferior composition. 😭

Regardless, New Kemama was fundamentally the same song, and I fundamentally liked Old Kemama, so whatevs, it made no different to me. In the eyes of many Eurovision diehards we were experiencing WORST PRESHOW SEASON EVER (after three songs... lol) and nothing clinches this brainworm more than a revamp announcement. “OH MY GOD HE WILL RUIN IT! I CAN GUARANTEE YOU I *WON’T* LIKE IT”. Self-fulfilling prophecies, ya know? It certainly didn’t help when the official channel accidentally uploaded a vid with broken soundmixing (‘OMG HORRIBLE LAST IN THE SEMI!!!!’ calm the ever-loving HELL down) and took another FULL WEEK to upload the correct vid. The damage had already been done. Typing "SEE I TOLD YOU THE REVAMP WOULD BE SHITE HA HA HA” in the Kemama comment box really just is the ESC equivalent of reponding with “Actually, *all* lives matter :smug:” to a BLM support pamphlet, isn’t it?

NF CORNER

While not my favourite NF of the bunch, I found the Czech NF to be lowkey epic. Not epic enough to remember its name but regardless Czechvision or whatever marked the end of an era because it was also the last selection spearheaded by Jan Bors :o

I think I’ve made it clear enough in the past that I’m somewhat mixed on Bors Era Czechia - Lake Malawi were a toetapping good, Ickolas was a pockmarked, skin-crawling evil and the other three inhibit a purgatory somewhere between “moderately nice” and “moderate timewaste.”

Still, I have great respect for the man who orchestrated Czech’s comeback after scoring NINE POINTS TOTAL across three years with the mindset of “So what? Why says we can’t win?” so ofc I was all into the idea of the “EIGHT INDIE ANGELS, HAND-PICKED BY BORS HIMSELF” NF that would serve as his swan song.

Naturally things went down the drain the second Bors left, with one of the eight peacing and his successor cancelling the live broadcast (does anyone remember what exactly happened? I vaguely recall one was the cause of the other but lol it’s July can’t be bothered to factscheck (Factsczeck?) anymore, bitches.

Anyway, ON TO THE GOOD STUFF, and yes, there was plenty.

We All Poop - “ All the Blood (Positive Song Actually)”

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Yes, as you can imagine I ofc IMMEDIATELY fell into like when I saw that chyron and invisioned the inevitability of the Czech Rep’s Rep immediately alienating every parent just based on their name alone <3 😍 w/e WAP quickly became that “Good but not great” song you find in every NF that everyone gushes over because it’s the whitest option available. Like, yes, “All the blood” is good, but musically it’s identical to Green Day and Twenty-One Pilots and god name ANY 90s-early00′s American Punk Rock band. For me the enjoyment came from the fact that WAP were openly crazy vegan fundamentalists and the VC clip actively condemns the use ANY animal protein by replacing the cattle and game with LITERAL HUMAN BEINGS. 😍 :fusedmarcintensifies: :kasiamosage:

Pam Rabbit - “Get up”

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Ohhhh YES a glorious experimental Synth-Trap song only I could love and ofc I did. God what is there even to say; the provocative darkness of the verses combined with the swirling amorphousness of the chorus gives me LIFE. LUFF THIS SHIT <3333 Ftr, this was also the fave of Slovene Juror duo / synth angels / Boris faves ZALAGASPER, further proving their pathetic naysayers that they own all things music and the haters can suck a series of-

Barbora Mochowa - “White and Black Holes“

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Lol, yes even with a “Get up” existing, there was a song I liked even more. Barbora proved a very competent Lana del Gay last year, but I was a YUGE fan of this year’s... Kate Bush-Björk blend of ethereal awesome. It is so soothingly beautiful and the rare example of a song that I find completely free of flaws. Were the competition not such a hard place, I’d be pissed she didnt win (at least she won the jury vote MASSIVE KUDOS to every alum on that) but w/e this selection had opions and I’m rather robbed of a “Kemama” than I am of a BRILLIANT IRREPLICABLE AETHERBALLAD. ~Danse balance sûr les white and black holes~

Elis Mraz & Cis T - “Wanna be like”

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I *VERY* strongly felt that if the Czech Republic wanted to win ESC, they should have picked Elis and even now I STILL believe she could have won. That isn’t to say I gushed over “Wanna be like” because I find it kind of annoying lol. Yes, I LOVE an annoying female voice (:Tones&Icackle:) but Elis’s reaches a Camilla Cabello sort of place for me (good lord get Senorita OFF the fucking radio) and the Scat + White Guy Rapping middle-eight. 😬. However, the second I opened up the video clip for this paragraph and was immediately BLASTED by Elis murdering a ukelele and wearing a “schoolgirl” outfit straight from a Japanese tentacle porn movie and OH MY GOD THE AGGRESSIVE TWERKING made me reconsider that hey, this min-sized Meghan Traynor actually kinda highkey owns, yo! Yet, I’m not at all bothered we lost her in the Czech NF because we got UNO DOS QUATRO CINCO SEIS :fatmansplit: fill up the megameme slot instead, so...

Eurovision 2020 vs Eurovision 2021

BENNY RUINED HIS SONG AND NEVER WOULD HAVE QUALIFIED. jk I’m not a moron. Sure, “Kemama” wasn’t an easy sell because you know AFROBEAT in a contest where half of the people watching are fash (ie: all of Eastern Europe, who watch out of ~Nationalistic Sentiment~ 😬), but there are Kemama live renditions out there and he owns them SO hard lol. A few soundmixing issues really would not have stopped Benny from qualifying in that RIDICULOUSLY WEAKSAUCE SEMIFINAL are you fucking kidding me. He probably would’ve bombed in the Grand Final, but I mean it’s Czech and it’s not Ickolas so ofc it would have.

And Czech renewed him for 2021 regardless of the sceptics, woohoo! I think part of it was due the Czech not wanting to re-organize an ENTIRE NF from scratch without Jan Bors, but probably also because Benny owns live when he isn’t engaged in psychological trench warfare with actual human detritus <3 and also because the Czech fucking CARE about their artists and don’t drop them like a sack of rotten potatoes wtfshitprus.

Can’t wait for the moment when he qualifies and Efendi does not, etc, etc.

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

I’d say that the core around which the Ben Drama spun was pretty standard fare: niche fave beats out the concensus fave, meltdowns ensue, people convince themselves it was the WRONG decision because it wasn the result they wanted, try to disown the song and make a fool of themselves because the song slaps, sorry. Even the revamp drama felt more of less generic for me, because yawn fantards melting down over a revamp of a song they don’t even like what else is new.

However, what I do take away that the revamp was ENTIRELY Benny’s idea which he told no one about (cue to JAN BORS having a social media meltdown like he’s Caesar at the Ides of March 💔) added MORE afrobeat just to troll his haters even more <3 God, I’d say it was bad from a musical perspective but this level of in-your-face defiance is fucking iconic and hilarious, sorry. This entire this year is so batshit bonkers that the concept of a someone potentially shooting themselves in the foot and “torpedo’ing” their qualification chances (not rly, he would’ve Q’d anyway lol) JUST to take the moral high ground in a racially coded argument only HE took seriously may not even be the craziest concept in the year! (lol it definitely isn’t. Look at the pics I haven’t greyed out yet)

This and more yield Benny some well-earned Senheads! Yay!!

Score: 3 Senhits out of 5.

#Eurovision #Eurovision 2020 #Eurovision Song Contest #Czech Republic #Czechia #Bohemia #Ben Christovão #Benny Christo

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buzzdixonwriter · 4 years

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Hoo Noo Shmoo?

Never let it be said that this blog is flagging in its enthusiasm for flogging horses so dead they’re found in the glue bin at Office Max.

To whit, the Scorsese vs MCU brouhaha.

Bottom line: Scorsese is right. As well made as MCU movies are, they ain’t cinema, they’re glorified commercials to sell MCU product.

Full disclosure: I should know, since I wrote for G.I. Joe, Transformers, and a host of other toy-based syndicated animation shows. I’m happy with the work I did, I can point proudly to specific episodes I wrote that aspire to be more than mere half-hour commercials…

…but they ain’t art.

They ain’t art, despite our aspirations to do the best job we could, because ultimately we creators were not allowed to create what we felt best for our stories, but what Hasbro deemed vital to their sales.

(The closest we got to art was when Hasbro cancelled The Inhumanoids toy line in mid-production of the TV series, and said we could finish our broadcast commitment however we saw fit so long as it didn’t result in an FCC complaint. As a result, we went nuts.)

My Hasbro / Sunbow experience remains a highpoint of my creative life, so I’m not denigrating the talent, skill, ability, spirit, and enthusiasm of those making MCU movies.

…but they ain’t art.

Now, those who love MCU movies think Scorsese’s comments are a slam against them.

Welllll…no, not directly.

But they do underscore how popularity -- especially of media designed to push product -- is a faulty measuring stick for artistic merit.

Case in point: The Shmoo.

Wuzza shmoo, you ask (and thus proving my point)?

Shmoos were extremely popular in the late 1940s. Part of the wonderfully wacky world cartoonist Al Capp created for his hit Li’l Abner comic strip, shmoos represented a parable on American consumerism, modern day geese laying not mere golden eggs but birthday cakes with candles a’blazin’.

As Capp described them:

They reproduce asexually and are incredibly prolific, multiplying faster than rabbits. They require no sustenance other than air.

Shmoos are delicious to eat, and are eager to be eaten. If a human looks at one hungrily, it will happily immolate itself -- either by jumping into a frying pan, after which they taste like chicken, or into a broiling pan, after which they taste like steak. When roasted they taste like pork, and when baked they taste like catfish. Raw, they taste like oysters on the half-shell.

They also produce eggs (neatly packaged), milk (bottled, grade-A), and butter -- no churning required. Their pelts make perfect boot leather or house timbers, depending on how thick one slices them.

They have no bones, so there's absolutely no waste. Their eyes make the best suspender buttons, and their whiskers make perfect toothpicks. In short, they are simply the perfect ideal of a subsistence agricultural herd animal.

Naturally gentle, they require minimal care and are ideal playmates for young children. The frolicking of shmoos is so entertaining (such as their staged "shmoosical comedies") that people no longer feel the need to watch television or go to the movies.

Some of the more tasty varieties of shmoo are more difficult to catch, however. Usually shmoo hunters, now a sport in some parts of the country, use a paper bag, flashlight, and stick to capture their shmoos. At night the light stuns them, then they may be whacked in the head with the stick and put in the bag for frying up later on.

Of course, in the original strip continuity, the shmoos were quickly eradicated, driven to extinction by food packagers who feared bankruptcy.

It was a sharp, biting message, and one that looked critically at both insatiable consumerism and capitalism’s claims of superiority.

Capp, of course, was too savvy a marketeer himself to eliminate the shmoos entirely, and so he provided for one breeding pair to survive…and for the shmoos to make repeated appearances for the rest of Li’l Abner’s run.

Shmoo mania ran rampant with shmoo dolls, shmoo clocks, shmoo games, shmoo candy, shmoo snacks, and shmoo apparel.

The money truck basically backed up to Capp’s front door and dumped its load on his porch. Shmoos proved insanely popular and it seemed the mania would never end…

…except it did.

To mangle metaphors, you can only take so many trips to the same well before your audience starts asking “What? Beans again?”

And then, in a fickle flash, it’s over.

I’d be hard pressed today to find anyone younger than the boomer cohort who ever heard of Al Capp or Li’l Abner unless their school or community theatre presented the Broadway musical adaptation of the strip (the show remains popular with amateur theatrical troupes such as high schools and colleges because the huge cast of Dogpatch citizens guarantees everybody who tries out for the show will land some part in it).

For all their popularity and merchandise and media impact -- songs on the radio, big spreads in weekly news magazines -- the shmoos left virtually no cultural footprint.

(Full disclosure yet again: I wrote for a Scooby-doo knock-off by Hanna-Barbera called The New Shmoo and it was a piece of crap, abandoning the whole consumerism point of the original shmoos and making them -- or just “it” in our case -- a pseudo-funny dog sidekick for a squad of mystery solving kids. And it wasn’t a piece of crap because we didn’t try our best, it was a piece of crap because the shmoo was treated as ubiquitous “product” under the misconception that of course everybody younger than Joe Barbera would recognize the name and love the character so deeply that they’d simultaneously develop amnesia about what made the original character so appealing.)

Product.

That’s what one of the most brilliant, most poignant, most spot-on commentaries on rampant consumerism and ruthless capitalism ironically reduced down to. Product.

There’s a line in Jurassic Park that resonates here: ”Life will find a way.”

Let’s paraphrase that to “Art will find a way” because like life, art is an expression of the creative urge.

Right now, by and large, it’s trapped in the giant all encompassing condom of corporate consumerism, providing fun and pleasure and excitement, but not really creating anything new, to be wadded up and thrown away when the suits are done screwing us.

But every now and then there’s a tiny pinprick in the sheath, and when that happens there’s the chance of something wonderful, something meaningful, something of lasting value emerging.

It is possible for art to emerge from a corporate context, but only if the corporate intent is to produce a work of art for its own purposes. Michelangelo carved David as a work for hire, the local doge commissioning the sculpture because he wanted to impress peers and peasants by donating the biggest statue ever made by the hottest artist of the era (and even then Michelangelo needed to resort to subterfuge to keep the doge from “improving” on his work with “suggestions” [read “commands”].)

The very first Rocky movie was a work of art because the producers focused on telling a simple, singular story about a loser who could only win by going the distance, not by defeating his opponent but by refusing to be beaten by him.

It’s a great cinematic moment that rings true and it’s going to last forever…unlike sequels Rocky II - V where Rocky fights supervillains like Mr. T and a robot (hey, that was the movie playing in my head when I watched Rocky IV and it was a helluva lot more entertaining than what I actually saw onscreen).

The suits castrated Rocky, reducing him from a unique universal cultural touchstone down to…well…product.

The MCU movies are product; rather, they are two-hour+ commercials to sell product in the form of videogames, action figures, T-shirts, and Underoos.

The real art occurred almost 60 years ago when Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko knocked out page after page as fast as they could, drawing deep from the wellsprings of their own interests, experiences, and passions.

(“What about Stan?” I hear you ask. Look, we all love Stan, but truth be told his great contribution to the MCU came in his service as drum major for the Merry Marvel marching Society. God bless him for firing up the fan base’s enthusiasm for the Marvel bullpen’s work, but compare what his artists did before and after their collaboration with him to what he did before and after his editorial tenure at Marvel and it’s clear upon whose shoulders the muses rested.)

As much fun as MCU movies are (I’ve seen about 1/3 of ‘em and enjoyed most of what I saw), I also recognize in them the harm they do.

They are promoted heavily to sell product to raise the fortunes of one of the biggest corporations on the planet, a corporation that holds control over five of the largest, most popular entertainment brands on the market.

To protect their cash cows, Disney chokes potential rivals in their cribs.

Think there’s going to be another Alien or Predator movie now that Disney owns them and Star Wars? Why create rivals to a mega-successful property you already own? (I will be genuinely surprised if we see another Guardians Of The Galaxy movie in light of the faltering popularity of Star Wars in Disney’s eyes; they’re going to want to shore up their billion dollar investment rather than call it a day and let some upstart -- even an upstart they own 100% -- rob them of revenue.)

Disney’s battle plan to choke out all potential rivals leaves no room in the DEU (Disney Expanded Universe) for independent minded creators.

They want competent hired pens who can churn out the product they desire in order to bolster sales of other products derived from those.

(Even more full disclosure: I wrote for Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers as well as some Aladdin and Scrooge McDuck comic book stories.)

Disney’s MCU, for all its expertly executed whiz-bang, is a bloated, soulless zombie, a giant gaudy inflated parade balloon blocking the vision of others.

There’s a scene in the movie The Founder -- a genuine cinematic work of art that comments ironically on the selling of a product -- that applies here.

Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) relentlessly browbeats the McDonald brothers (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch) into letting him replace their real milkshakes with what will come to be known as the McShake, an ersatz product that at best reminds one of what a real milkshake should taste like.

The McDonald Brothers are horrified. Not only does it not taste like a real milkshake, but it goes against the very grain of what they desire as restauranteurs: To provide quality food quickly for their customers, trading value for value.

Kroc will have none of this. To him the customers are simply one more obstacle between him and their money.

He doesn’t see them as the source of his revenue, but as impediments to same.

What benefits them, what nurtures their diets, what gives them pleasure, what trades value for value is completely unimportant to him.

They exist only to make him rich and powerful.

By the end of the film, Kroc has effectively declared war on his own partners, his own employees, his own customers. He recognizes he is not in the business his customers and employees and partners think he’s in (i.e., fast food) but rather in the real estate business, buying land that McDonald’s franchises must lease from him in order to operate.

By the end, he’s not concerned with how well his customers eat, or how well his employees are treated, or how financially secure his franchise managers feel.

By the end, all he wants is the money, and he doesn’t care how his franchises make it so long as they pass it along to him.

As a result, McDonald’s contributes heavily to America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics, advising their employees to take second jobs so they can afford to continue working for them at substandard wages.

Disney’s MCU is a super-sized Happy Meal™ that’s ruining the cultural health of its consumers.

#Marvel #Disn #Jack Kirby #Stan Lee #Steve Ditko #Star Wars #MCU #Rocky #Martin Scorsese #media #movies #superheroes

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thomasjoeme-blog · 5 years

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How to watch Women's World Cup 2019 Live

We know that there are countless fans of soccer game in world who put heart and soulto it and we also know that FIFA world cup of women is hitting on every fan. Everybody welcome back so today we're gonna talk about how to watch the Women's World Cup live for free streaming online. As we're talking Women's World Cup so who do you think will win it? the tournament starts we will talk about in a minute but I can earn you back the home nation of myself and ask for sporting England in Women's World Cup

I hope to watch majority of it comment underneath me we'II will win. so welcome to streaming news folks this is a brand new website so do remember to bookmark because we will cover streaming news abour football, basketball, baseball and soccer streaming, new programs old programs new apps old apps and where to find the stuff you'll find it all here so do stay tuned and you'll find out more. so today well on Friday depending on when you're watching this the Women's World Cup launches and goes live and it's gonna be a crack in torment it's really piped up is probably the biggest astronomers ever been and the sponsorship and the popularity behind the tournament is bigger than ever which is brilliant folks it's great and I can't wait to watch it cuz you see some amazing football talent on the pitch and it's definitely worth to watch. what I put together we've got a list of where you can watch it on the website so you can go on and check it will tell you every TV channel to be shown on but as what is that the one place we know of in America they all broadcast it on Fox Sports and I'm not sure the price on that but what we do know is in the UK and they are showing up on BBC and BBC iPlayer and as you all know we win the streaming industry if you want to access BBC or BBC iPlayer from another country you need to be obviously on UK server and apparently you need a TV licence then you need to be on a UK server to access so if you wanted to change the UK server things like VPNs can do that. so it's completely up to you how you do it. Here are some sites I got which are showing live streaming of some channels free of cost and if you follow the link You can watch it there free. These sites are TGO TV Time4tv , Extrafreetv , Stream2watch and Vipleague

If any of these site is not working in your country you can use free vpn service.

These above websites will have the direct links to where the matches can be watch free. I know it's on Fox but many other channels gonna be broadcast it on as well so we've got tons of stuff on there for you folks

I think it's gonna be a great time and I'm really excited for to have a bit of football to see us through the summer.

#women's world cup #women's football #women foot ball #women's soccer #women soccer

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queerbenji · 7 years

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Below is a lovingly compiled list of books about girls who love girls that have happy or hopeful endings! The list currently has 106 entries and spans multiple genres. It’s alphabetized by author, and links go to the books’ Goodreads pages. Recommendations are welcome!

Sparks: The Epic, Completely True Blue, (Almost) Holy Quest of Debbie by S.J. Adams

A wonderfully refreshing, quirky, and genuinely funny tale of coming-out to your best friend–and long-time secret love. Three chases, three declarations of love, two heartbreaks, a break-in, and one unforgettable quest.

Taijiku by Elizabeth Andre

Angela’s juvenile detention sentence on an alien underwater ship doesn’t seem very exciting until she encounters the fearsome Taijiku or meeting her crew mate Stella, leaving Angela unable to say which is the greater challenge: giant sea monsters or falling in love.

Poppy Jenkins by Clare Ashton

Poppy is the heart of Wells, a beautiful village in mid-Wales. She has a doting family, an errant dog and a little sister with a nose for mischief, but as the only gay girl in the village, the chance of romance is rarer than a barking sheep. That is, until her ex-BFF roars back into her life…

The Music Box by Elaine Atwell

Berlin, 1942. Caroline Reed is a newly minted American spy, eager to prove herself on her first mission: to recover vital information from behind enemy lines. But she’s not the only one. Iris and Caroline come to trust each other, or perhaps it’s something more. But what does love matter when the fate of the world is at stake?

Valhalla by Ari Bach

In the year 2330 in Northern Scotland, war is obsolete and only brilliant minds are valued, Violet emerges into adulthood with more brawn than brains, branded from childhood as a useless barbarian. With the help of a group of outcasts just like her, Violet is about to learn the world needs her exactly as she is.

Bluebell Hall by Kayla Bashe

Headstrong, impetuous Tansy Trilby can barely sit still, let alone read–but what she lacks in academic achievement, she makes up for in magical talent, and so she is accepted to be a boarder at Bluebell Hall. Tansy’s adventures lead her to discover: is love truly the greatest magic of all?

Screaming Down Splitsville by Kayla Bashe

In an alternate 1950s, two groups of people with magical powers fight for dominance. Flip thinks her healing powers are useless, while Emma has magic but is unable to speak. The two band together to escape a torturous lab. As the women seek to evade their pursuers, their friendship rekindles, and they are forced to confront both enemies and insecurities.

Kaleidoscope Song by Fox Benwell

Fifteen year old Neo loves music. it punctuates her life in South Africa. A life in radio is all she’s ever wanted. When Umzi Radio broadcasts live in a nearby bar Neo can’t resist. She sneaks out to see them, and she falls in love, with music, and the night, but also with a girl: Tale has a voice like coffee poured into a bright steel mug, and she commands the stage.

Dissention by Stacey Berg

For 400 years, the remnants of humanity have struggled for survival in the last inhabited city. Echo Hunter 367 is exactly what the Church created her to be: loyal, obedient, lethal. But when Echo’s mission leads her to Lia, a rebel leader who has a secret of her own, Echo must choose between the woman she loves and the purpose she was born to fulfill.

Drum Roll, Please by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

Drum Roll, Please is a contemporary middle grade novel about a drummer named Melly, whose parents announce they’re getting a divorce the day before she leaves for rock camp. She has a life-changing summer at camp as she navigates confusing feelings, changing friendships, and her first crush on a girl, and learns to find her own beat.

Starting From Here by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

Colby’s heart has been broken too many times. Her mother has been dead for almost two years, her truck driver father is always away, her almost girlfriend just dumped her, and now she’s failing chemistry. But when a stray dog lands literally at her feet, bleeding and broken on a busy road, it knocks a chink in the walls she’s built around her heart.

How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake

All Grace wants is her own life. Emotionally trapped by her unreliable mother, Maggie, and the tiny cape on which she lives, she focuses on her best friend, her upcoming audition for a top music school in New York, and surviving Maggie’s latest boyfriend. When Grace meets Eva, who has her own share of ghosts to outrun, both girls must figure out how to love and how to move on.

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

Greta is a duchess and crown princess—and a hostage to peace. This is how the game is played: if you want to rule, you must give one of your children as a hostage. Go to war and your hostage dies. As nations tip closer to war, Greta becomes a target in a new kind of game that will end up killing every hostage—unless she can find a way to break all the rules.

The Swan Riders by Erin Bow

Sequel to The Scorpion Rules.

The Diviners by Libba Bray

Evie has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to her Uncle Will on the bustling streets of 1926 New York City. Evie worries he’ll discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island’s other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition. Their story is told from many points of view, multiples of which are LGBT women.

First Position by Melissa Brayden

Anastasia Mikhelson is the rising star of the New York City Ballet. She’s sacrificed creature comforts, a social life, as well as her own physical well-being for perfection in dance. Even her reputation as The Ice Queen doesn’t faze her. Though Ana’s at the peak of her career, competition from a new and noteworthy dancer puts all she’s worked for in jeopardy.

How Sweet It Is by Melissa Brayden

After losing the love of her life four years prior in a plane crash, Molly thinks she’s ready to navigate the dicey dating waters once again. However, you can’t always pick who your heart latches on to. When Jordan, the beautiful younger sister of her lost love, returns to town, Molly finds her interest piqued in a manner she wasn’t prepared for.

Waiting in the Wings by Melissa Brayden

Jenna has spent her whole life training for the stage. At graduation, she’s stunned when a chance audition lands her a prime supporting role in the hottest Broadway touring production in the country. The one thing she didn’t prepare for, however, was her new costar Adrienne. Is Jenna ready to sacrifice what she’s worked so hard for in exchange for a shot at love?

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown

Joanna has been out and proud for years, but when her popular radio evangelist father remarries and decides to move all three of them to the more conservative Rome, Georgia, he asks Jo to do the impossible: to lie low for the rest of her senior year. Jo reluctantly agrees, but things get infinitely more complicated when she meets Mary.

Style by Chelsea M. Cameron

Kyle Blake likes plans. So far, they’re pretty simple: Finish her senior year of high school, head off to a good college, find a cute boyfriend, graduate, get a good job, get married, the whole heterosexual shebang. Nothing is going to stand in the way of that plan. Not even Stella Lewis.

Echo After Echo by Amy Rose Capetta

Debuting on the New York stage, Zara is unprepared—for Eli, the girl who makes the world glow; for Leopold, the director who wants perfection; and for death in the theater. In heart-achingly beautiful prose, Capetta has spun a mystery and a love story into an impossible, inevitable whole —and cast light on two girls, finding each other on a stage set for tragedy.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Somewhere within our crowded sky, a crew of wormhole builders hops from planet to planet, on their way to the job of a lifetime. To the galaxy at large, humanity is a minor species, and one patched-up construction vessel is a mere speck on the starchart. But all voyages leave their mark, and even the most ordinary of people have stories worth telling.

Fat Angie by E.E. Charlton-Trujillo

Angie is broken—by her can’t-be-bothered mother, by her high-school tormenters, and by being the only one who thinks her varsity-athlete-turned-war-hero sister is still alive. She’s just trying to make it through each day. That is, until the arrival of KC Romance This darkly comic anti-romantic romance is a work of entertaining and meaningful fiction.

Debris Dreams by David Colby

Drusilla lives in the Hub, a space station used by the Chinese-American Alliance as a base to exploit Luna’s resources. When a terrorist group destroys the space elevator, space’s highway to Earth, suddenly Dru’s parents are dead and she is cut off from her girlfriend Sarah on Earth. Can Dru survive lunar terrorist attacks and find her way home to Sarah?

Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst

Betrothed since childhood to the prince of Mynaria, Princess Dennaleia has always known what her future holds. But Denna has a secret. She possesses an Affinity for fire—a dangerous gift for the future queen of a kingdom where magic is forbidden. Now, Denna must learn the ways of her new home while trying to hide her growing magic.

Clancy of the Undertow by Christopher Currie

In a dead-end town like Barwen a girl has only got to be a little different to feel like a freak. And Clancy, a typical sixteen-year-old misfit with a moderately dysfunctional family, a genuine interest in Nature Club and a major crush on the local hot girl, is packing a capital F.

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation…and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power, but it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air. The only way to get her family back is to travel to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl. This book is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.

The Caphenon by Fletcher DeLancey

On a summer night like any other, an emergency call sounds in the quarters of Andira Tal: not only is there other intelligent life in the universe, but it’s landing on the planet right now. Tal leads the first responding team and ends up rescuing aliens who have a frightening story to tell. They protected Alsea from a terrible fate—but the reprieve is only temporary.

The Dark Wife by Sarah Diemer

Persephone has everything a daughter of Zeus could want–except for freedom. When Persephone meets the enigmatic Hades, goddess of the underworld, she experiences something new: choice. Hades offers Persephone sanctuary in her land of the dead. But Persephone finds more than freedom in the underworld. She finds love, and herself.

Twixt by Sarah Diemer

The people of Abeo City have forgotten their pasts, and they can trade locks of their hair to sinister women for an addictive drug. Nox will give you back a single memory–for a price. But when Lottie takes Nox, her memories remain a mystery, and the monsters who fill the sky at night refuse to snatch her. Soon, a dark truth begins to surface…

Big Big Sky by Kristyn Dunnion

Rustle is a young scout in a tight-knit female warrior group of five. They’re trained to be aggressive, quick thinking, and obedient. But somehow the group is falling apart now. So when their StarPod is transported to the Living Lab, they all know that it’s time to make a run for it, or else they’ll be deplugged - finished, dead.

Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis

Amara is never alone. Not when she’s protecting the cursed princess she unwillingly serves. Not when she’s punished, ordered around, or neglected. She can’t be alone, because a boy from another world experiences all that alongside her, looking through her eyes. They’ll have to work together to survive–and discover the truth about their connection.

Wildthorn by Jane Eagland

Louisa longs to break free from her respectable life as a Victorian doctor’s daughter. But then Louisa is sent to Wildthorn Hall, labeled a lunatic and even deprived of her real name. As she unravels the betrayals behind her incarceration, she realizes there are many kinds of prison. She must be honest with herself and others in order to be free. And love may be the key.

The Seafarer’s Kiss by Julia Ember

Having long-wondered what lives beyond the ice shelf, nineteen-year-old mermaid Ersel learns of the life she wants when she rescues and befriends Ragna, a shield-maiden stranded on the mermen’s glacier. But when Ersel’s childhood friend and suitor catches them together, he gives Ersel a choice: say goodbye to Ragna or face justice at the hands of the glacier’s brutal king.

Unicorn Tracks by Julia Ember

Mnemba has found a place in her cousins successful safari business, where she quickly excels as a guide. When she’s employed to guide Mr. Harving and his daughter, Kara, as they study unicorns, the young women are drawn to each other. During their research, they discover a conspiracy by a group of poachers to capture the Unicorns and use their supernatural strength to build a railway. Together, they must find a way to save the creatures Kara adores.

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sarah Farizan

Leila’s Persian heritage already makes her different from her classmates; if word got out that she liked girls, life would be twice as hard. But when a sophisticated, beautiful new girl, Saskia, shows up, Leila starts to take risks she never thought she would. Gradually, Leila begins to see that almost all her classmates are more complicated than they first appear to be.

The Cursed Queen by Sarah Fine

Sequel to The Impostor Queen, which stars a bi woman. Cursed by an enemy queen, Ansa must fight against an invisible foe—the dark magic that has embedded itself deep in her bones. The more she seeks to hide it, the more dangerous it becomes. Ansa is torn between her loyalty to her people, her love for the cheiftain’s daughter, and her own survival instincts.

Honey Girl by Lisa Freeman

The year is 1972. Fifteen-year-old Haunani “Nani” Grace Nuuhiwa is transplanted from her home to California after her father’s fatal heart attack. Now the proverbial fish-out-of-water, Nani struggles to adjust to her new life with her alcoholic white (haole) mother and the lineup of mean girls who rule State Beach. But Nani is keeping several secrets that could ruin everything.

Noble Falling by Sara Gaines

When her convoy is attacked, Duchess Aleana Melora of Eniva, future queen of Halvaria is saved by her guard, only to discover her people have turned against her and joined forces with the kingdom of Dakmor, Halvaria’s greatest enemy. After a rescue by a woman marked as a criminal, Aleana struggles to survive long enough to crowned, though her heart has other priorities.

Annie On My Mind By Nancy Garden

This groundbreaking book, published in 1992, is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings. The book has been banned from many school libraries and publicly burned in Kansas City.

Good Moon Rising by Nancy Garden

Lambda Literary Award winner “Good Moon Rising” is about two young women who fall in love while rehearsing a school play, realize they’re gay, and resist a homophobic campaign against them.

Nora and Liz by Nancy Garden

When her rental car has a flat tire, Liz Hardy stops at the Tillot farm for a car jack. Nora Tillot walks Liz out to the barn and, as they search for the jack, the two women begin a journey neither anticipated. As their friendship turns passionate, will their happiness be shattered by rumors?

Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard

All Pen wants is to be the kind of girl she’s always been. So why does everyone have a problem with it? They think the way she looks and acts shows disrespect. But respect and loyalty, Pen discovers, are empty words. Old-world parents, disintegrating friendships, and strong feelings for other girls drive Pen to see that to be who she truly wants to be, she’ll have to man up.

The Second Mango by Shira Glassman

Queen Shulamit never expected to inherit the throne of tropical Perach so young. At twenty, grief-stricken and fatherless, she’s also coping with being the only lesbian she knows after her sweetheart ran off for an unknown reason. Her search for a royal girlfriend quickly becomes a rescue mission after finding a temple full of women turned to stone by an evil sorcerer.

The Flywheel by Erin Gough

Seventeen-year-old Del drops out of high school when her romance with another girl goes horribly wrong. Preferring chaos to bullying, Del makes it her mission to save her dad’s crumbling café, the Flywheel, while he ‘finds himself’ overseas. This book is a heart-warming debut novel about queer romance, crap parents & finding your feet when life gets messy.

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner

When Cass’s best friend Julia is killed in a sudden car accident, and while Cass is still reeling from her death, Julia’s boyfriend and her other drama friends make it their mission to bring to fruition Julia’s nearly-completed secret project: a musical about an orphaned ninja princess entitled Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad.

Eat Your Heart Out by Dayna Ingram

A breakneck tale of kick-ass, wise-ass, sexy-ass lesbians — and zombies. The strip-mall calm of Nowhere, Ohio, is shattered by the sudden, simultaneous appearance of Renni Ramirez, hyper-competent star of the beloved Rising Evil B-movie franchise, and actual zombies, leaving Ashbee’s hapless staff and Renni trapped behind an automatic door they can’t lock.

That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston

Set in a near-future world where the British Empire never fell and the United States never rose, That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a novel of love, duty, and the small moments that can change people and the world.

The Gallery of Unfinished Girls by Lauren Karcz

Mercedes is an artist. At least, she thinks she could be, but she hasn’t been able to paint anything worthwhile since her award-winning piece Food Poisoning #1 last year. Her lack of inspiration might be because her abuela is comatose in faraway Puerto Rico after a stroke. Or the fact that Mercedes is in love with her best friend, but is too afraid to admit her true feelings.

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz

Clara is a highly-skilled technician specializing in the popular ‘Raise’ AI companions. She sticks around just long enough to replenish her funds before she moves on Sal is a fully autonomous robot, at best out of place in society and at worst hated. When Clara stops by Sal’s shop for lunch, she doesn’t expect to find a real robot there, let alone one who might need her help.

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

Astrid desperately wants to confide in someone, but her feel like the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn’t know the passengers inside, but they’re the only ones who won’t judge her when she asks them her most personal questions–like what it means that she’s falling in love with a girl.

Radical by E.M. Kokie

Preppers. Survivalists. Bex prefers to think of herself as a realist who plans to survive, but regardless of labels, they’re all sure of the same thing: a crisis is coming. And when it does, Bex will be ready. But Bex isn’t prepared for Lucy, who is soft and beautiful and hates guns. This gripping new novel questions our assumptions about family, trust, and what it really takes to survive.

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

Emi is a film buff and a true romantic, but her real-life relationships are a mess. She has desperately gone back to the same girl too many times to mention. But then a mysterious letter from a silver screen legend leads Emi to Ava. Ava is unlike anyone Emi has ever met, and she is about to expand Emi’s understanding of family, acceptance, and true romance.

You Know Me Well by Nina Lacour and David Levithan

Mark and Kate have sat next to each other for an entire year, but their paths have never crossed. That is, until Kate spots Mark miles away from home, out in the city for a wild, unexpected night. Kate is lost, having just run away from finally meeting the girl she’s been in love with from afar. Mark, meanwhile, is in love with his best friend Ryan, who may or may not feel the same way.

And Playing the Role of Herself by K.E. Lane

Actress Caidence Harris is living her dreams after landing a leading role in a hot new police drama shot on location in glitzy LA. Her sometimes-costar Robyn Ward is magnetic, glamorous, and devastatingly beautiful, the quintessential A-List celebrity. Soon Caid sees that all is not as it appears, but can she take a chance and risk her heart when the outcome is so uncertain?

An Unstill Life by Kate Larkindale

Livvie feels like she’s losing everything: her two best friends have abandoned her for their boyfriends, her mother continues to ignore her, while her sister, Jules, is sick again and getting worse by the day. Her only escape is in the art room, where she discovers not only a refuge from her life, but also a kindred soul in Bianca, the school “freak”.

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

Welcome to Andover, where superpowers are common, but internships are complicated. Despite her heroic lineage, Jess is resigned to a life without superpowers when she stumbles upon the perfect internship—only it turns out to be for the town’s most heinous supervillain. On the upside, she gets to work with her secret crush, Abby, who Jess thinks may have a secret of her own.

A&B by J.C. Lillis

Barrie dreams of a career in music. When her rival Ava ropes her into a secret collaboration, it sparks feelings neither girl expected. Can love and ambition live side by side? Is happiness an art-killer? They’ll figure it out with the help of a blue guitar named Fernando, a keyboard named Rosalinda, and a few new friends who feel like home.

Ash by Malinda Lo

In this enchanting retelling of Cinderella, Ash must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love. Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

Huntress by Malinda Lo

Kaede and Taisin, two seventeen-year-old girls, are picked to go on a dangerous and unheard-of journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen. The exciting adventure prequel to Malinda Lo’s highly acclaimed novel Ash is overflowing with lush Chinese influences and details inspired by the I Ching, and is filled with action and romance.

Complementary and Acute by Ella Lyons

Annabell is captain of the Number Ninjas, her senior year schedule is perfect, and her best friend Jacqueline is going to be right by her side for all of it. But on the first day back, Jac throws a wrench in Anabelle’s tidy plans. Not only has she rearranged her classes and dropped Number Ninjas, she’s joined the Girls who Like Girls Program, leaving Anabelle’s entire world in upheaval.

10 Things I Can See From Here by Carrie Mac

This is the poignant and uplifting story of Maeve, who is dealing with anxiety while falling in love with a girl who is not afraid of anything. Will she be able to navigate through all the chaos to be there for the people she loves?

Colorblind by Siera Maley

Harper has a secret, and it’s not that she likes girls. She has a gift: she can see how old other people will be when they pass away. Nothing she does changes this number, which becomes especially clear when her mother dies in a car crash. Then she falls for Chloe, whose number is 16, who’ll be dead by the end of summer. An uplifting book reminiscent of The Fault in Our Stars.

Dating Sarah Cooper by Siera Maley

When a misunderstanding leads to best friends Katie and Sarah being mistaken for a couple and Sarah uses the situation to her advantage, Katie finds herself on a roller coaster ride of ambiguous sexuality and confusing feelings. How far will Sarah go to keep up the charade, and why does kissing her make Katie feel more alive than kissing her ex-boyfriend ever did?

Taking Flight by Siera Maley

Lauren is a city girl at heart. When a judge deems her father unfit to be her guardian, she’s shipped to the rural mountains of northern Georgia, where David, a personal friend of the judge, lives. Lauren’s plan is simple: to have her best friend pick her up on the day she turns eighteen, and to be as difficult as possible until then. But her plan doesn’t account for David’s daughter.

The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse by Mabel Maney

Follow Cherry, Jackie, and girl detective Nancy Clue on their gay adventures. Mabel Maney’s camp classic The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse has been beloved by readers since it was first published in 1993. This sparkling parody of 1950s girl adventure stories will make you laugh out loud.

The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend by Mabel Maney

Mabel Maney’s playful parody of 1950s girl adventure books continues in The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend. This raucous sequel also stands on its own as a swell introduction to Cherry and her pals, and a food and fashion guide to the glamorous Eisenhower years.

Reign of the Fallen by Sarah Glenn Marsh

The first in an LGBT fantasy series that follows a talented necromancer who must face down a deadly nemesis who has learned how to turn her magic into a weapon. A lavish fantasy with a surprising and breathtaking romance at its core, Reign of the Fallen is a gutsy, unpredictable read that will grab readers by the throat and never let go.

Wherever the Dandelion Falls by Lily R. Mason

Riley Montgomery is a bartender, a lab assistant, and a sex worker – all in different lives. A seemingly innocuous conversation with a graduate school professor unravels Riley’s life into three separate strands. The three versions of Riley’s life are as separate as can be, yet have one common thread: falling in love with a beautiful and brave woman named Faye Nguyen.

Parties in Congress by Colette Moody

Elated to secure her first paid political staff position, Bijal Rao is eager to focus her efforts on the election of her candidate to U.S. Congress. However, Bijal’s first unforeseen obstacle is her profound and unexpected attraction to their opponent—incumbent Congresswoman Colleen O'Bannon—who is outspoken, charismatic, and openly lesbian.

The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin by Colette Moody

The Gulf of Mexico, 1702: When Gayle and the pirates of the square-rigger Original Sin steal ashore to abduct a doctor to tend to their wounded, they end up settling for the doctor’s attractive fiancée Celia, the town seamstress. The two forge a partnership born of necessity that Gayle soon hopes will veer away from insurmountable danger and instead detour directly to her bed.

Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz

Everywhere Etta turns, someone feels she’s too fringe for the fringe. Not gay enough for the Dykes, her ex-clique, thanks to a recent relationship with a boy; not tiny and white enough for ballet; and not sick enough to look anorexic (partially thanks to recovery). Etta doesn’t fit anywhere until she meets Bianca, the straight, white, Christian, and seriously sick girl in Etta’s therapy group.

Meg & Linus by Hanna Nowinski

Meg and Linus are best friends bound by a shared love of school, a coffee obsession, and being queer. It’s not always easy to be the nerdy lesbian or gay kid in a suburban town. But they have each other. And a few Star Trek boxed sets. They’re pretty happy. Meg & Linus is a fun story about two quirky teens who must learn to get out of their comfort zones and take risks.

A Story of Now by Emily O’Beirne

Claire knows she needs a life. And some new friends. But brittle, beautiful, and just a little bit too sassy for her own good sometimes, she no longer makes friends easily. When Robbie and Mia walk into Claire’s work they seem the least likely people to help her find a life. But despite Claire’s initial attempts to alienate them, an unexpected new friendship develops.

Future Leaders of Nowhere by Emily O’Beirne

Finn and Willa have been picked as team leaders in the future leader camp game. Fierce, competitive Willa has shaken the usually confident Finn. Soon they both realize that the hardest thing of all is balancing their clashing ideals with their unexpected connection. And finding a way to win, of course.

Here’s the Thing by Emily O’Beirne

It’s only for a year. That’s what sixteen-year-old Zel keeps telling herself after moving to Sydney for her dad’s work. But Zel soon finds life in Sydney won’t let her hide. There’s her art teacher, who keeps forcing her to dig deeper. There’s the band of sweet, strange misfits her cousin has forced her to join for a Drama project. And then there’s the curiosity that is the always-late Stella.

Points of Departure by Emily O’Beirne

Best friends Kit and Liza have been looking forward to this trip forever. Five girls, five tickets overseas. It’s exactly what they all need after the final slog of high school. But when Kit’s suddenly forced to drop out, Liza’s left with three girls she barely knows, and they’re all learning that travel isn’t just about the places you go, but who you’re with at the time.

Because of Her by K.E. Payne

Forced to move to London thanks to her father’s new job, Seventeen-year-old Tabitha has to leave her friends, school, and, most importantly, her girlfriend Amy, far behind. To make matters worse, Tabby’s parents enroll her in the exclusive Queen Victoria Independent School for Girls, hoping that it will finally make a lady of her. But Tabby has other ideas.

Axiom by Rachel Marie Pearcy

The Assembly controls every citizen of Axiom. Everything is assigned, from their career and living quarters, to their spouse and reproduction. Ella never thought twice about it, until now. After meeting Carly, Ella realizes things aren’t as perfect as she thought. The two girls’ friendship slowly blossoms into something more, and as their love grows, so does the threat of punishment.

Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters

With a steady boyfriend, the position of Student Council President, and a chance to go to an Ivy League college, high school life is just fine for Holland. At least it seems to be. But when Cece Goddard comes to school, everything changes. Cece and Holland have undeniable feelings for each other, but how will others react to their developing relationship?

Lies My Girlfriend Told Me by Julie Anne Peters

When Alix’s girlfriend, Swanee, dies from sudden cardiac arrest, Alix is overcome with despair. Then she finds Swanee’s phone, pinging with texts from Liana, Swanee’s secret girlfriend. Brought together by Swanee’s lies, Alix and Liana become closer than they’d thought possible. But Alix is still hiding the truth from Liana. Will coming clean to Liana mean losing her, too?

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

One miscarriage too many spelled the end of Max and Zoe Baxter’s marriage. Zoe, for her part, finds healing relief in music therapy and the friendship, then romantic love with Vanessa, her counselor. After Zoe and Vanessa, now married, decide to have a baby, they realize that they must join battle with Max, who objects on both religious and financial grounds.

Like Water by Rebecca Podos

In Savannah Espinoza’s small New Mexico hometown, kids either flee after graduation or they’re trapped there forever. Vanni never planned to get stuck—but that was before her father was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. Then she meets Leigh, who’s utterly unique. But caring about another person threatens to bring to the surface the questions she’s held under for so long.

Her Name in the Sky by Kelly Quindlen

Hannah wants to spend her senior year of high school going to football games and Mardi Gras parties with her tight-knit group of friends. The last thing she wants is to fall in love with a girl–especially when that girl is her best friend, Baker. And Baker might want to be with Hannah, too–if both girls can embrace that world-shaking, yet wondrous, possibility.

Noteworthy by Riley Redgate

Jordan’s low voice gets her shut out of the school musical, but a spot has opened up in the elite a cappella octet. Worshipped…revered…all male. Jordan dresses as a guy and wins the audition. With her secret growing heavier every day, Jordan confronts what it means to be a girl (and a guy) in a male-dominated society, and—most importantly—what it means to be herself.

The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed

Three misfits come together to avenge the rape of a fellow classmate and in the process trigger a change in the misogynist culture at their high school, transforming the lives of everyone around them in this story that will work its way into a special place in your heart. Told in alternating perspectives, one of whom is gay and Latina, another is autistic, and all are remarkable.

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

Juliet just came out to her family and isn’t sure if her mom will ever speak to her again. But Juliet has a plan, sort of, one that’s going to help her figure out this whole “Puerto Rican lesbian” thing. She’s interning with the author of her favorite book: Harlowe Brisbane, the ultimate authority on feminism, women’s bodies, and other gay-sounding stuff.

Cherry by Lindsey Rosin

In this honest, frank, and funny debut novel, four best friends make a pact during their senior year of high school to lose their virginities—and end up finding friendship, love, and self-discovery along the way. Will everything go according to plan? Probably not. But at least the girls have each other every hilarious, heart-warming, cringe-inducing step of the way.

Unspeakable by Abbie Rushton

Megan doesn’t speak. She hasn’t spoken in months. Pushing away the people she cares about is just a small price to pay. Because there are things locked inside Megan’s head - things that she cannot, must not, let out. Then Jasmine starts at school: bubbly, beautiful, talkative Jasmine. And for reasons Megan can’t quite understand, life starts to look a bit brighter.

Sword of the Guardian by Merry Shannon

The shocking assassination of her brother causes Princess Shasta’s father to appoint Shasta’s new savior as the Princess’s bodyguard. But what Shasta doesn’t know is that her new guardian has a very well-kept secret: he is actually a she. The two grow closer than anyone, especially her father, could have predicted. Will the truth change their relationship forever?

The Light of the World by Ellen Simpson

After her grandmother’s death, Eva finds diaries detailing the magical life of a girl in the Roaring Twenties. She cannot reconcile the young girl in these diaries with the miserable old woman she loved. Eva starts to investigate the puzzle with the help of a local historian and his assistant Olivia, they find a forgotten labyrinth under the city. But they’re not the only ones down there…

The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrustkie

For Cassandra Leung, bossing around sea monsters is just the family business. But when the pirate queen Santa Elena swoops in on Cas’s first solo mission and snatches her from the bloodstained decks, Cas’s dream of being a full-time trainer seems dead in the water. Cas has fought pirates her entire life. But can she survive living among them?

The Edge of the Abyss by Emily Skrutskie

Sequel to The Abyss Surrounds Us.

Starring Kitty by Keris Stainton

Kitty’s keeping secrets. Like how she’s struggling to cope with her mum’s illness. And how she’s falling for the girl with the purpley-red hair… A fun film competition with her friends Sunny and Hannah seems like the perfect distraction. But then Dylan wants to be more than Kitty’s secret. Is Kitty ready to let her two worlds meet, or will she risk losing Dylan forever?

Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before by Karelia Stetz-Waters

Shy, intellectual, and living in rural Oregon, Triinu just doesn’t fit in. She tries to hide behind her dyed hair and black wardrobe, but it’s hard to ignore the bullying, and it’s even harder to ignore the allure of other girls. As Triinu tumbles headlong into first love and teenage independence, she realizes that the differences that make her a target are also what can set her free.

Prom and Other Hazards by Jamie Sullivan

Frankly, prom is a ridiculous concept, and Sam wants nothing to do with it. Except for the tiny fact that she’s been in love with her best friend Tash since they were ten years old, and Tash dreams of a perfect, romantic prom. Sam had given up hope, until she spotted The Suit in a shop window. Surely the perfect suit is all she needs to finally admit to Tash how she feels.

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever. Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another. This book is about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.

Our Own Private Universe by Robin Talley

Fifteen-year-old Aki has a theory. And it’s mostly about sex. No, it isn’t that kind of theory. Aki already knows she’s bisexual. So far, Aki has dated only guys, and her best friend is the only person who knows she likes girls, too. Actually, Aki’s theory is that she’s got only one shot at living an interesting life—and that means it’s time for her to actually do something. Or at least try.

The Summer I Wasn’t Me by Jessica Verdi

Lexi has a secret. She never meant for her mom to find out. And now she’s afraid that what’s left of her family is going to fall apart for good. Lexi knows she can fix everything. She can change. She can learn to like boys. New Horizons summer camp has promised to transform her life, and all she wants is to start over. But sometimes love has its own path.

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Darcy Patel is afraid to believe all the hype. But it’s really happening - her teen novel is getting published. Instead of heading to college, she’s living in New York City, where she’s welcomed into the dazzling world of YA publishing. Told in alternating chapters is Darcy’s novel, the thrilling story of Lizzie, who wills her way into the afterworld to survive a deadly terrorist attack.

Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

When BFFs Charlie, Taylor and Jamie go to SupaCon, they know it’s going to be a blast. What they don’t expect is for it to change their lives forever. When Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie has a chance to confront her long-time crush . And in the magic of SupaCon, Taylor starts to rethink playing it safe when it comes to her secret crush on Jamie.

27 Hours by Tristina Wright

Rumor fears two things: hellhounds too strong for him to kill, and failure. Jude has two dreams: for humans to stop killing monsters, and for his strange abilities to vanish. But in no reality should a boy raised to love monsters fall for a boy raised to kill them. Nyx keeps two secrets: the moon speaks to her, and she’s in love with Dahlia, her best friend. This is the story of one 27-hour night.

Dirty London by Kelley York

All London wanted out of her senior year of high school was anonymity. Then she discovers that Wade, one of the most popular guys in school, is gay like her, and their new-found closeness has half the student body convinced they’re hooking up. Rumors start flying, and London is pretty sure she’s developing a crush on the one girl who sees through it all.

The Gravity Between Us by Kristen Zimmer

At just 19, Kendall is Hollywood’s hottest young starlet—but behind the glamour is a girl who longs for normal. Payton is Kendall’s best friend, and the one person who reminds her of who she really is. But Payton has a secret that could make everything ten times worse. Because to her, Kendall is more than a best friend—she is the only girl that she has ever loved.

#LGBT books #sapphic books #wlw books #sapphic #wlw

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pilgrimonpoint · 4 years

Text

“The Pattern Aggrandizment of Self-Delusion.”

Is There a Term for Convincing Those Around You of The Obvious, Then the Obvious Thing Doesn’t Happen?

Yes. It is called “The Pattern Aggrandizement of Self-Delusion.”

I have been in a near constant state of awakening and suicidal ideation, but really, who hasn't been?

Anyway, one of the realizations I had sprang from the analysis of my accrued data metrics that addressed “whether or not”, in aggregate, “listening to my ‘gut' had the generalized overall result being beneficial, certainly positive, and nice feeling upon post examinations of my necessarily subjective experience of the undocumented events as remembered after the fact".

What I learned was ‘jaw dropping.’

The unqualified result was that, astoundingly, I had never listened to my gut up until the age of 46, and my life had generally been a sucky experience, BUT, since then, while being in the most chaotic time in memory, it has also been the most mind-bogglingly creative and satisfying time I have ever lived!

The crises personally and country wide were seismic! In many, many ways I was the same me, but in a different place and time. The question then occurred to me, "what is the most consistent random thing to occur in my life?”

Without hesitation, the thought manifested within my expansive mind, “420”.

Now mind you, I am not a pot smoker. Sure, in the past I liked to “loosen the screws", but for me the experience was “losing the screws altogether. Has anyone seen my glasses? How about my keys?”

You feel me.

Since I was 16, you would not credit as believable how many times I have wondered,” what time is it?”

Looked at the clock, and, you guessed it, exactly 420.

It happened so much that I have been using it as a running joke for over 10 years now. Even going as far as to text my partner every time it happens to try and share the weirdness of it. It did not even occur to me to wonder, “I wonder what it could mean in relation to April 2020?” prior to last Nov.

When it did, the first thing I thought was, “I wonder if that is when I am going to die?” My ‘gut’ reacted when I considered it. So, I considered it more.

Now this is the part of the story where it REALLY starts to make sense. When I was 22, and just out of the Marines, Texas had just started the state lottery. Looking at the odds of winning, it occurred to me that the best random odds one could have would be to pick one set of numbers at 21, or 22, then play those numbers with odd regularity until I died at 127, and have a better chance of winning than any other strategy.

Let me tell you, I was SO impressed with myself. Especially when each number I chose had a special significance. OF COURSE, I told my family, my friends, strangers, little children, EVERYBODY about my brilliant plan. I talked about it so much, my friends and family knew my numbers without the need for hints.

After two weeks of being fully the most annoying pleasant intellectual in all West Texas, my roommate and I were parked in front of The Colonial at 9 pm. Terry was in the store, and my gut went crazy!

I had the darndest feeling that I should buy a ticket, BUT I only had 5 dollars and we were headed to the dollar theater to watch a movie. $1 to get in. $2 for a large soda, and $2 for a hotdog or nachos. So, in weighing my desires, I found getting a soda and hotdog outweighed my need to buy a lottery ticket, and realize again I was paying “the poor man's tax” as my father was want to call the lottery.

OK!

I had decided.

Shut UP gut!

Then Terry got into the vehicle.

“Aren’t you going get a lottery ticket??” He asked significantly, leaning over towards me and wagging his eyebrows to indicate he was only half mocking my intellectual prowess, which was profound, yet untested at such a young age. I then had to explain to him my well-reasoned excuse not to purchase a ticket, even repeating my father's moniker for the gambling game.

“Alright!” Terry said, and we went to the movies.

In those days, the theater would put up the numbers next to the movie screen on drawing nights. I was watching the trailers when Terry punched the holy living hell out of my shoulder.

“What the F Ter-,” Terry interrupted my indignant anger, “Look!” he said loudly, pointing. Following his pointer finger I saw at the end of it, my lottery numbers. Loud, recriminations ensued.

That was my first gut failure and will long live in the annals of family history of missed chances.

I have had many times from then to my present 47 years where, every time I ignored my gut, I later learned I should have listened to my gut. It was with this infallible information in hand last Dec, I decided TO follow my gut for ONCE in my life. Further, I decided to combine it with another observation regarding my life.

That observation was my life seemed to, without intent, be the most cliché life that I am aware of. So much so, that if I am in an unusual situation, or witness to one, and I can think of an absurd situational cliché similar to what I am witnessing, then further picture an even more absurd cliché that involves me, then it will probably happen, and then leave where ever I am because I am tired of experiencing absurd clichés in my life. Really.

As a brief example of what I mean, I have actually been in a situation where a hot, beautiful, younger woman was BEGGING me to be with her, and my response in that moment was, “No, not until you tell me something personal about you. It can be made up, I don’t care, but it has to sound personal.” To which she said, “Shut up and GIVE it to me!” I then responded with, and I am completely serious, I said, “But I want to get to know you as a person!”

Really? What!

And I meant it! I realized the irony of the situation as well as the cosmic humor of the organic interaction.

My friends said that I could get struck by lightning on a cloudless day. It was so ridiculous, even my friends and family could only agree with the sentiment.

Back to 420.

So I combined “Cliché” with “420” and came up with the conviction, not mere supposition, but conviction that the “Big One” was going to happen in the San Francisco Bay area on, you guessed it, 4/20/20.

For those too busy for historical references, “Big One” in this context refers to a geological tremor, of OMG proportions. If I had lost some of you to a more debauched definition for “Big One” when associated with San Francisco, no worries, I added some useless but fun filler for the rest of us to read until you came back from your “wonderings”. We are not judging.

Welcome back!

I further backed this up with a dream I had my first night in the area. I dreamt that I was on a roof with another guy and water was swiftly rising up and overtaking us, and I was yelling, “which way do we swim for the Berkeley Hills?!”. Not a normal dream, but one of those super lucid, real feeling ones.

I had had 5 of them in my life. One of THOSE 5 was a dream where I standing on a cliff on the west coast overlooking the ocean, and there were meteors, several of them trailing huge smoke trails behind them, and I said in the dream, "And behold, a mountain was cast down from the heavens, and this is the 6th seal”

I quietly began telling friends and family and those I like to go camping or be out of town on 4/20. Hell, I was so convincing, my sons and partner were trying to help pack so we could get on the road at 2 am on 420! It was such a mess despite all efforts, I took that as a sign I should just chill and not drive to the border of OR to wait. The border of Oregon, OF COURSE because, during our research, we discovered that our RV Trailer Park of extravagant plushness, was encircled on three sides by liquefaction zones. LIQUIFACTION ZONES! We were also within a 15-minute walk on our other side to the Hayward Faultline. As well as 5, not 4, not 6, but 5 volcanoes that had active within enough historical time, to add a nice hysterical flavor to our familial rash of survivalist instincts!

Did I really want to see if, in another cosmic cliché, I was a prophet?

“Oh man. Please no. Not in the middle of a pandemic with apocalypse feelings like this happening with everyone in twenty-seven social interactions I had been having lately. I even read a couple chapters of Revelations. The only thing more catastrophic than reading revelations with serious intent to understand is our local crazy on the street corner not carrying an “end is nigh” sign. OMG, he is carrying a sign! I will get burned at a stake for sure!”

I reasoned one of two things were going to happen come 4/20/20.

One, my talent for identifying unusual, but true patterns in meta social data was more that I wanted to actually have, or two, I had a lesson to learn and needed to reevaluate some of my life choices.

Not doing anything would be irresponsible, where doing something COULD save some lives. If nothing happened, no real trouble for anyone, and I didn’t broadcast across the internet, and set myself up for being an I-D-I-O-T publicly. Only privately, and within a small circle of people who would either need to be stopped from making more of my prophetic powers than is seemly, or hopefully, they could accept the above reasons as fair, and let me learn said lessons without too much joking about Nostradamus or even considering crossing a pandemic border to then go into a more serious lockdown for 14 days of shame, or anything. I mean, I DID tell them the same thing as in this paragraph BEFORE 420, so I have a very reasonable, and self-evaluating insanity.

YAY!

*my partner says I must inform y’all that we had actually been planning a trip to OR for many months before our invisible stalking COVID frenemy began crawling up both legs at the same time

It being June 8th now, you can figure that I learned the lesson of not associating entirely subjective experiences into any kind of designation of anything prophetic or inane. Trust me, I am not that guy, which is exactly why the whole collection of things felt MORE probable. People were like, “Man, Adrian is saying this. Shit! Maybe something IS going to happen!”

Yeah Something happened. I realized my hair was not on fire, and humans are silly as hell. Oh, I made up the term up top. Seemed in keeping with the tongue-in-cheek feel I was going for.

Pattern Aggrandizement of Self-Delusion in no way whatsoever, needs to be credited to me when bringing up who coined the phrase, but if absolutely necessary, you may use Sabrina Siebert, 42, from Troy Michigan. She IS the boss. I merely dictated this answer.

*OOOOwwwww

**she is giving the evil eye, but smiling, and denying, and now looking down at her phone. Mission accomplished.

Feedback in comments! THANKS!

Respectfully,

A. Yobi Blumberg

#veteranartist #voctrbe #veteranwriter #ptsdtherapy #thetruth #hmor

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castlemainecourier · 4 years

Text

How To Fix The Australian Domestic Summer Cricket Schedule

In recent years, much has been made of the Australian Domestic schedule and the lack of red ball cricket being played around the country when the Test side plays their annual summer series. When players are out of form, debate rages on potential replacements, often looking at Big Bash form as an indicator of who should be drafted into a Test squad in need.

Cast your mind back to previous years when Test batsman had horror runs of form, and changes were made as frequently as every Test - if Burns’ form had dipped further this summer or a batsman were injured, there is nothing in the way of red ball form that Justin Langer and Cricket Australia can lean on to call in a replacement. It’s now been over a month since the last Sheffield Shield fixture, and this gap is compounded by the fact Australia’s next best are now dropping to one knee to slog sweep every other ball in the BBL.

The Domestic 50-over competition has descended into something of a farce, but with the number of ODI’s played, the ease of scheduling these together in groups of 5 or more games, and the extent of rotation within the ODI squads anyway, there are always opportunities being provided for the 13-15 players most likely to see the field in important one day fixtures. It means the “backups” usually played the last game anyway and have no shortage of high-level match play when the need arises to make changes to a starting XI. ThIs is a much more pressing issue for the Men’s Test team than it is the ODI side.

We’ve stopped worrying about it this year given the Test side is winning so comfortably, but this issue will rear its head again one day and when it does, Cricket Australia needs something in place to draw on to ensure they have elite players in form in the correct format.

The Big Bash cannot be moved - it pays for everything. In it’s place, there should be at least one (I say two or three) First Class games scheduled between either some combination of select Aus XI’s (think Cricket Australia XI, PM’s XI, Chairman’s XI etc) or even an Australian Under 23 or Under 21 side for Australia’s “next best” long-form players to be on show.

Played in a regional centre, or a city that misses out on a Test match makes a lot of sense too, and gets high quality long-form cricket to more parts of Australia.

It’s also a terrific opportunity to host second tier cricket nations or ‘A’ sides from other countries out here to play - let’s get Ireland, Zimbabwe or Afghanistan here for First Class fixtures to be played around our summer Test series. It develops the game globally, as well as providing legitimate long-form playing opportunities for key Aussie players who aren’t involved in the BBL. (How much faster can teams like this improve with more opportunities to play cricket against quality opposition, and the exposure that comes with that.) Match payments, even if modest, will further contribute to solidifying the professional opportunities of developing cricket nations.

This doesn’t get off the ground if it isn’t supported - it has to be televised/accessible, and the debate that will flow if a series like this is promoted is endlessly positive for the game. Cricket Australia has a massive social media presence - a series like this can penetrate a very large , engaged audience before any further marketing dollars are spent just be effectively promoting the game through the existing channels.

Televising a game doesn’t need to be the colossally expensive affair we see for Tests - but it does need to be of a higher quality than the free shield streams Cricket Australia plays through their app (even the biggest cricket nuffie will turn off a poor quality stream pretty quickly.) When the BBL game in Launceston lost their main cameras at each end of the pitch due to the nearby storms last week, Fox Cricket/Channel 7 showed us what can be done with a limited number of cameras by producing high-quality coverage with only a handful of shots from around the ground available. Forget hotspot, forget the super slow mo cams, and forget ball tracking systems - just get a half dozen or so complementing angles with high quality cameras and let the cricket do the talking.

If costs are of further concern, 3-day games can still receive First Class status, and this could potentially mean a 2 or 3 game series can be staged at a reduced cost in as little as two weeks. A quality stream with advertisers and sponsors, even if they are paying bargain-basement prices, will help to cover some costs of production and hosting the games also. (As an aside - these games absolutely must be given First Class status and produced to a level appropriate of this tag to be remotely beneficial and attract the quality of players needed to pull something like this off).

If Cricket Australia is serious about developing their long-form talent in the longer term - this cost of hosting games like this is simply essential. Providing more opportunities for long-form cricket at a high level is critical of Australia is to continue to develop quality long-form cricketers. And back to the original point here: it provides high quality long-form cricket at the domestic level at a time when the Australian Test side needs its alternatives to be plying their trade should they be called upon - not trying to hit 6’s in the Big Bash with firework shows and motorcross displays taking place in the background.

Here’s a quickly cobbled together list of names we all recognise who are not currently playing Test cricket or the BBL (yes, some are on BBL lists but not featuring regularly) who could feature in such a fixture, many of whom would be reasonably significant draws for attendance and viewership:

Marcus Harris

Alex Doolan

Kurtis Patterson

Will Pucovski

Jason Sangha

Peter Nevill

Michael Neser

Joe Mennie

Chase Sayers

Chris Tremain

Trent Copeland

Marcus Harris has just been dropped by the Renegades, and could feature in a series like this as somebody who is very near the top of the pile for Australia’s next line of Test batsman. And if a series like this is given enough weight, players who are desperate to put their name up for a Test spot (Harris is one example who might fit the bill here, but also somebody like Usman Khawaja or Mitch Marsh) might forgo a week or two of the Big Bash to try to push their case for Test selection. If Khawaja was coming off a couple centuries in a First Class games over the last two weeks, instead of averaging 30 in the Big Bash, would Australia be tempted to move the in form player into the top of the lineup to replace Burns?

(Again let me be clear I don’t think Burns should be dropped - but every other year I can remember, there has been somebody’s spot in the Test side under pressure and no one playing red ball cricket to provide legitimate options).

Two or three extra fixtures may not sound like much - but that’s an increase of 20 or 30% per year on the current first class fixtures for a state player. Add to this the importance of having long-form cricket to draw on for back-up Test players, and a concept like this provides an incredible opportunity for Australian domestic players to press their case for future Test selection. Particularly those on the fringes or younger players yet to cement regular roles in Shield teams, this provides a massive additional opportunity at a level that could develop into a Test cricket breeding ground. If Cricket Australia and a broadcaster get behind an idea like this - even if it’s just with a free stream or put on a secondary channel - this also provides valuable, real-life media training for younger and less experienced players.

The Cricket Australia XI in the domestic One Day Cup a few years ago was a brilliant idea executed poorly. Let’s get it right in the long form of the game and watch the results in the Test Championship for years to come

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czqy · 7 years

Text

going home (prologue)

very loosely based off the prompt “my country’s going through some issues so i’m here in hiding and you’re a civilian who lives in the same apartment complex as me” which I got at the same time as my previous multichaptered fic so. this has been a long time coming.

Keith, prince of the Galra Empire, has been sent to Earth for his safety, where he will attend the Galaxy Garrison. Initially, all he wants is to just get through school and go back home as soon as he can. This proves to be difficult and his plans soon change, throwing him into a position he never could’ve imagined.

* this is the only time I’ll be posting a chapter in full, after this I’ll only be providing links.

prologue | chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 3 | chapter 4

AO3 | FF.net

“You can’t just send me away!”

“Keith, honey, please. You—”

“No! I am the Galran prince! How can I still be the prince if I’m on another planet? This is my home!” Keith stood up, clenched his hands into fists and glared at his mother.

She sighed, sat down on Keith’s bed, and patted the spot beside her. “Sit.” After a moment of silence Keith relented and sat down. “Do you think I want you to go? I know it’s hard to comprehend, but it’s also for your safety. Hey, don’t scoff at me. When General Zarkon first told me of this I was furious too, and I told him this was the safest place for any Galra to be. But you know how it is, he’s in charge, and whatever he says goes. It might not be so bad, I hear you can learn how to fly at the Galaxy Garrison, isn’t that what you’ve always wanted to do?”

Keith nodded, but kept his head down. When his mum pulled him into a hug, he buried his head into her shoulder.

“How long will I be gone?”

“I don’t know sweetie, but it won’t be forever. Cheer up, okay? We still have some time to go.”

The next day, Zarkon made a public announcement. It was done in front of a massive crowd, as well as broadcast across the whole of the Galra Empire so Keith had to be dressed suitably. His royal attire was reserved for formal events, so he only got to wear it a few times every year. It was a very impressive outfit, briefly based off the armour of the highest ranking officers in their army. The biggest difference was in the colours, he had mostly brilliant dark purples and deep maroons to represent his status. While the chest emblem for some officers and soldiers glowed a purple colour, and while some didn’t glow at all, his had a bright yellow candescence. His royal cape was also a maroon colour, but with a navy blue underlining. Keith did enjoy wearing the outfit, even though it usually meant he had to attend long and boring events.

Keith sat with his mother and watched Zarkon tell the crowd in front of them how “Crown Prince Keithen will be sent to Earth for his safety, so that he can return after the war to a new era of peace and prosperity, and oversee our empire without any interruptions”. Keith felt incredibly unamused and probably would’ve shown that fact were it not for his mother glaring at him every few doboshes. When the speech was over, a ceremony was held where Keith had to endure countless members of the Galra Empire approaching him and wishing him a safe trip, while also assuring him they will continue to dedicate their lives to the empire while he was gone. Keith shook every single one of their hands and thanked them for their devotion in response, no matter whether he actually meant it or not. By the end of the whole thing, he just wanted to go back to his room and stay there until the day he had to leave.

Fortunately, it quietened down within the next few days. Business resumed as usual and Keith spent most of his days either training, practising the universal language used on Earth, or reading up on Earthly customs. He had also visited the druids to receive his supply of Quintessence.

Quintessence was basically the reason as to why the war started, and it was so important that even as royalty Keith could not gain access to it. Needless to say, he was quite excited to have some in his possession.

“Now, Your Highness, this isn’t something to be fooled around with, do you understand?”

Keith nodded, saw that the druids were waiting for a verbal response and grunted out a “yes I understand”. He then held out his arm so he could be shown how to use it.

“Apply a few drops onto a section of your body, and then rub it in with a circular motion. When there is no visible yellow left, you should start to feel your body surge with an unfamiliar energy. It may feel intrusive at first, but you’ll become accustomed to it. Then, and I trust that you’ve been practising, you need to shapeshift into a human. You should find it a lot easier than usual, Quintessence amplifies your abilities. Try it now.”

Because a druid had applied Quintessence while explaining how it worked, Keith could already feel a tingling sensation course through his body. He then took a deep breath in and imagined the arm of a human, how different their skin colour was and how they had furless arms. He tried focusing the energy into that section of his arm and watched as it slowly transformed into something resembling the image in his mind.

The druids nodded and commended him. Still amazed, Keith kept his eyes on his now-human arm and asked why he’s taking what he thought was so little Quintessence with him. After all, no one knew how long he would be gone.

“Quintessence goes a long way, Your Highness; so long as you do not actively try to shift back into your natural form and maintain a basic focus on holding your shift, one application can last up to a few days. Be sure to only apply the bare minimum required though, because while you do not need to use a lot at once, you still do have a limited supply. Rest assured, however, that we will find a way to provide you with more should you run out.”

Keith headed back to his room with his bag of Quintessence and decided to keep his human arm for now. The sight was unusual for him, even though he had seen countless images of humans while honing his skill. It was different seeing something on a picture or through a video and seeing it on yourself. He wondered what he would look like fully as a human, and whether he would fit in without any trouble.

The night before Keith left he decided to go to the observatory deck and look at the stars. Strangely, he hadn’t really gone anywhere since he learnt he would be going to Earth. It felt like desertion, so he had barely even left the castle. The deck was different though, it was open to all inhabitants of the castle, but Keith found that no one went there as much as he did and it became his special place. He first stumbled upon it as a child, playing hide-and-seek with one of the servants. He was trying to find the servant and ran into the room which had massive glass panes all around and an entire view of the city. He never found the servant that round, but he decided discovering this room was worth losing all the hide-and-seek games in the world. On the left he could see the castle gardens, as well as many of the residential buildings that had purple-red lights at night. Facing forward he had the widest outlook of the city, and from the highest point. As a child, he enjoyed standing there and pretending he was emperor, looking down and watching over his empire and people. The right side was his favourite, there was no infrastructure and it had the clearest view of the night sky. Even as the years went by, when buildings changed and the whole city became more military-like the right side remained untouched, and the view was as clear as ever.

Tonight it was still empty as usual, and Keith was appreciative for the solitude. This time, unlike many previous times, he made sure to take in every view, and with as much detail as he could. He wanted to have a clear image of his home in mind while he was gone. As he stood over the city, he reminisced what it was like just ten years ago, how the empire had seemed then. Right then and there, he vowed to make sure it would return to that state when he ruled.

Moving to the right side, Keith was suddenly overcome with a wave of emotions. Over the past week or so he hadn’t properly given his situation any thought, choosing to bury it under work and training. Now that he was alone and looking at the vast sky all those feelings seemed to bubble over. He felt anger towards Zarkon for sending him away from his home, sadness for being forced to leave the only place he’s ever known, and just… defeated. He did not want to leave his home, or his people, and especially not his mum. It felt like abandonment and the last thing he wanted was to feel as if he had not properly fulfilled his role.

Wiping away a few stray tears, Keith told himself that there was nothing he could do besides make the best out of his circumstances. He would go to Earth, do whatever he had to do there, then come back home and start taking back the empire. He also decided to commit as many stars and constellations as he could see into memory, because even though the planets may be different some of the stars were bound to be the same. He would still be under the same sky no matter how far away he was.

The day Keith left for Earth was an uneventful one, much to Keith’s relief. He packed in the morning, including the bag of Quintessence and some human clothes the druids supplied, then went about his day as he usually would. Only towards night were things different from usual. After dinner with his mother, they walked to the hangars together, where they found General Zarkon and a few druids waiting.

“Prince Keithen, the coordinates for your pod have been set for Earth, and you should expect to arrive at the Galaxy Garrison within a few varga. When you do, the pod will automatically set a course to return here. I wish you the very best for your journey and stay. Please excuse myself for the abruptness but I must take leave as there is urgent business to attend to.” General Zarkon bowed, and swiftly walked off with the druids following. Keith was quite surprised he showed up to send him off, but was not amazed that he left as soon as he could. Once they were out of eyeshot, Keith turned to his mum.

“So, I—”

“Don’t be too upset when you’re on Earth okay? Try to make some friends, or at least be friendly, I don’t want you to be alone the whole time. Make sure you take care of yourself too, exercise, and the food may taste weird but please remember to eat, I cannot stand the thought of not knowing whether you are being healthy or not.” Keith’s mother suddenly could not stop talking and Keith was unsure whether to stay silent or cut her off.

“Mum! I’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Okay. One last thing. Two last things. Can you show me what you look like as a human? We can check that you’ll be able to shapeshift back as well.” It was an odd request and Keith wanted to ask questions but it was his mother, and it was also the last time he was going to see her for who knows how long so he agreed wordlessly.

Keith took out a vial of Quintessence, applied a few drops to exposed areas—his head, neck, hands—and rubbed it in. This time he was thrown off balance as it took effect. His vision blurred, and it felt like he was being pricked by needles. Still, he forced himself to focus and shift. It took a little longer than he remembered, possibly due to the larger scale, but he still did it. When he was done, he lifted his head and saw that his mum was close to tears.

Immediately he surged forward and pulled her into a hug. “I’ll be okay. Please don’t cry, and don’t worry about me, I’ll be back as soon as I can. Do you remember that sheet I gave you during dinner? It’s of a bunch of stars and constellations I found, so that way if you’re missing me you can go to the observatory deck and watch them. I’ll be doing it on Earth too, so, really, it won’t be so bad.”

They pulled apart and Keith’s mum ruffled his hair. “No, I’m fine, it was just that… You look good like this, honey. And the stars idea is brilliant too, I’ll be sure to do that. Now let’s see you transform back, shall we?”

Last time Keith had just let the Quintessence wear off, so he didn’t know what it’d be like to shift back before it could happen, nor how much effort it would take. He decided to drop his focus first, and saw that immediately a portion of him returned to Galra form. When he then pictured his appearance, all his natural features came back. It barely took any time, and was a lot easier than transforming into a human. Keith’s mum watched him, looking proud.

“Here is the last thing I need to give to you, and then it’ll be time to leave.” She pulled out something from inside her robe and handed it over to Keith. He took it and saw that it was completely wrapped up, but had the shape of a dagger. He then recognised it as his mother’s personal blade.

“Why are you giving this to me? It’s yours.”

“It wouldn’t be fair if I had a way to remember my son and he had no way to remember me, would it?” She smiled and hugged him once more.

This time, they pulled apart because they heard footsteps approaching. It was odd, since Keith’s pod was the only one scheduled to leave the hangar, and no others were supposed to be entering. They both immediately turned their heads to the direction where the sound was coming from and saw two suited creatures being escorted, as well as another being dragged along the floor.

The warmth shown to Keith by his mother was suddenly replaced with a cold demeanour. When she turned back to Keith, however, her eyes softened.

“I better go check this out. Stay safe, okay? I love you always, and I’ll see you soon.” With that, and with a kiss on the forehead, Keith’s mother strode off, in a way only an Empress could. A part of Keith was glad he would be getting away from royal affairs and being part of a war, but he knew that was a selfish notion, and felt guilty for thinking it.

Keith made sure his bags were all set and loaded before climbing into the pod and turning it on. He felt the same exhilarating rush he always did when a pod blasted off but it didn’t last long. The fact he was not going to be home for a long time sunk in, and he felt overcome with dread. He turned his head around as far as he could to watch his planet grow smaller and smaller, before setting his sights forward on what was to come.

#klance #keith #klance fanfic #klance fanfiction #vld keith #voltron legendary defender #wowclunawrites

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